
The Snow-ball Fight at Brienne School. 



THE 



BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON 



AFTERWARDS EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH 



ADAPTED AND EXTENDED FOR AMERICAN BOYS AND GIRLS 
FROM THE FRENCH OF 

MADAME EUGENIE FOA 

AUTHOR OF "little PRINCES AND PRINCESSES," " YOUNG WARRIORS, 
" LITTLE ROBINSON," ETC. 



^^^ 



Illustrated by Vesper L. George 



BO STON 

LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1895 




3i 



Copyright, 1895, 

BY 

LoTHROP Publishing Company. 



All rights reserved. 



typography by c. j. peters & SON, 

BOSTON. 



PREFACE. 



The name of Madame Eugenie Foa has been a 
familiar one in French homes for more than a genera- 
tion. Forty years ago she was the most popular writer 
of historical stories and sketches, especially designed 
for the boys and girls of France. Her tone is pure, 
her morals are hieh, her teachinofs are direct and effec- 
tive. She has, besides, historical accuracy and dramatic 
action ; and her twenty books for children have found 
welcome and entrance into the most exclusive of French 
homes. The publishers of this American adaptation 
take pleasure in introducing Madame Foa's work to 
American boys and girls, and in this Napoleonic 
renaissance are particularly favored in being able to 
reproduce her excellent story of the boy Napoleon. 

The French original has been adapted and enlarged 
in the light of recent research, and all possible sources 

5 



6 PREFACE. 

have been drawn upon to make a complete and rounded 
story of Napoleon's boyhood upon the basis furnished 
by Madame Foa's sketch. If this glimpse of the boy 
Napoleon shall lead young readers to the study of the 
later career of this marvellous man, unbiased by par- 
tisanship, and swayed neither by hatred nor hero-wor- 
ship, the publishers will feel that this presentation of 
the opening chapters of his life will not have been 
in vain. 



CONTENTS 



Chapter One. page 

III NapoIeon^s Grotto .....,»,. 9 

Chapter Two. 

The Cajioii's Pears .,,.,... 27 

Chapter Three. 

TJie Accusation . . . . = . . . . 43 

Chapter Four. 

Bread and Water . . . . . = . ' • . . 52 

Chapter Five 

A Wrong Righted . 64 

Chapter Six. 

The Battle with the Shepherd Boys ..... T^, 

Chapter Seven. 

Good-bye to Corsica . . . . . . . . . 81 

Chapter Eight. 

At the Preparatory School ....... 88 

Chapter Nine. 

The Lonely School-Boy . . r . . . . . 95 

Chapter Ten. 

In Napoleon'' s Garden . . . . = = » . 102 

Chapter Eleven. 

Friends and Foes . . . . » = « • • 113 

1 



8 CONTENTS. 

Chapter Twelve. page 

The Great Snow-ball Fight at Brienne School . . . 126 

Chapter Thirteen 

Recommended for Promotion . . . . . . . 141 

Chapter Fourteen 

Napoleo7i goes to Paris . . . • . . . . . 153 

Chapter Fifteen. 

A Trouble over Pocket Money . . . . . . 163 

Chapter Sixteen. 

Lieutenant Puss-in-Boots . . . . . . . 178 

Chapter Seventeen. 

Dark Bays . 189 

Chapter Eighteen 

By the II 'all of the Soldiers' Home 205 

Chapter Nineteen. 

The Little Corporal . 223 

Chapter Twenty. 

"■ Long Live the Emperor l''"' . . . . . - • 235 



THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 



CHAPTER ONE. 



IN NAPOLEON S GROTTO. 



On a certain August day, in the year 1776, two 
little girls were strolling hand in hand along the pleasant 
promenade that leads from the queer little town of 
Ajaccio out into the open country. 

The town of Ajaccio is on tne western side of the 
beautiful island of Corsica, in the Mediterranean Sea. 
Back of it rise the great mountains, white with snowy 
tops ; below it sparkles the Mediterranean, bluest of 
blue water. There are trees everywhere ; there are 
flowers all about ; the air is fragrant with the odor of 
fruit and foliaofs ; and it was throuofh this scented air, 
and amid these beautiful flowers, that these two little 
girls were wandering idly, picking here and there to 

9 



lO THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

add to their big bouquets, that August day so many 
years ago. 

Every now and then the Httle girls would stop 
their flower-picking to cool off; for, though the August 
sun was hot, the western breezes came fresh across 
the wide Gulf of Ajaccio, down to whose shores ran 
broad and beautiful avenues of chestnut-trees, through 
which one could catch a glimpse, like a beautiful 
picture, of the little island of Sanguinarie, three miles 
away from shore. 

As they came out from the shadow of the chestnut- 
trees, one of the little girls suddenly caught her com- 
panion's arm, and, pointing at an opening in a pile of 
rocks that overlooked the sea, she said, — 

" Oh, what is this, Eliza ? — an oven ?" 

" An oven, silly ! Why, what do you mean ? " 
Eliza answered. " Who would build an oven here, 
tell me ? " 

" But it opens like an oven," her friend declared. 
" See, it has a great mouth, as if to swallow one. 
Perhaps some of the black elves live there, that 
Nurse Camilla told us of. Do you think so, Eliza ? " 



IN NAPOLEONS GROTTO. - II 

" What a baby you are, Panoria ! " Eliza replied, 
with the superior air of one who knows all about 
things. "That is no oven; nor is it a black elf's 
house. It is Napoleon's grotto." 

" Napoleon's ! " cried Panoria. " And who gave 
it to him, then ? Your great uncle, the Canon 
Lucien ? " 

"No one gave it to him, child," Eliza replied. "Na- 
poleon found it in the rocks, and teased Uncle Joey 
Fesch to fix it up for him. Uncle Joey did so, and 
Napoleon comes here so often now that we call it 
Napoleon's grotto." 

"Does he come here all alone?" asked Panoria. 

" Alone ? Of course," answered Eliza. " Why 
should he not? He is big enough." 

" No ; I mean does he not let any of you come 
here with him ? " 

" That he will not ! " replied Eliza. " Napoleon is 
such an odd boy ! He will have no one but Uncle 
Joey Fesch come into his grotto, and that is only 
when he wishes Uncle Joey to teach him the primer. 
Brother Joseph tried to come in here one day, and 



12 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

Napoleon beat him and bit him, until Joseph was glad 
to run out, and has never since gone into the grotto." 

"What if we should go in there, Eliza?" queried 
Panoria. 

"Oh, never think of it!" cried Eliza. "Napoleon 
would never forgive us, and his nails are sharp." 

"And what does he do in his erotto ? " asked the 
inquisitive Panoria. 

" Oh, he talks to himself," Eliza replied. 

" My ! but that is foolish," cried Panoria ; " and stupid 
too." 

"Then, so are you to say so," Eliza retorted. " I tell 
you what is true. My brother Napoleon comes here 
every day. He stays in his grotto for hours. He talks 
to himself. I know what I am saying, for I have come 
here lots and lots of times just to listen. But I do not 
let him see me, or he would drive me away." 

"Is he in there now?" inquired Panoria with 
curiosity. 

" I suppose so ; he always is," replied Eliza. 

" Let us hide and listen, then," suesfested Panoria. 
" I should like to know what he can say when he talks 



IN NAPOLEONS GROTTO. 1 3 

to himself. Boys are bad enough, anyway ; but a boy 
who just talks to himselt must be crazy." 

Eliza was hardly ready to agree to her little friend's 
theory, so she said, " Wait here, Panoria, and I will 
go and peep into the grotto to see if Napoleon is 
there." 

" Yes, do so," assented Panoria; " and I will run down 
to that garden and pick more flowers. See, there are 
many there." 

" Oh, no, you must not," Eliza objected ; " that is my 
uncle the Canon Lucien's o-arden." 

" Well, and is your uncle the canon's garden more 
sacred than any one else's garden ? " questioned Panoria 
flippantly. 

" What a goosie you are to ask that ! Of course it 
is," declared Eliza. 

"But why?" Panoria persisted. 

"Why?" echoed Eliza; "just because it is. It is 
the garden of my great uncle the Canon Lucien ; that 
is why." 

" It is, because it is ! That is nothing," Panoria 
protested. "If I could not give a better reason" — 



14 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

" It is not my reason, Panoria," Eliza broke in. " It 
is Mamma Letitia's ; therefore it must be right." 

"Well, I don't care," Panoria declared; "even if it 
is your mamma's, it is — but how is it your mamma's ? " 
she asked, changing protest to inquiry. 

" Why, we hear it whenever we do anything," replied 
Eliza. "If they wish to stop our play, they say, ' Stop ! 
you will give your uncle the headache.' If we handle 
anything we should not, they say, ' Hands off! that 
belongs to your uncle the canon.' If we ask for a 
peach, they tell us, ' No ! it is from the garden of 3-our 
uncle the canon.' If they give us a hug or a kiss, 
when we have clone well, they say, ' Oh, your uncle 
the canon will be so pleased with you ! ' Was I not 
right? Is not our uncle the canon beyond all others?" 

" Yes ; to worry one," declared Panoria rebelliously. 
" But why ? Is it because he is canon of the cathedral 
here at Ajaccio that they are all so afraid of him ? " 

" Afraid of him ! " exclaimed Eliza indignantly. 
"Who is afraid of him? We are not. But, you see, 
Papa Charles is not rich enough to do for us what he 
would like. If he could but have the great estates 



IN NAPOLEON S GROTTO. 1 5 

in this island which are his by right, he would be 
rich enough to do everything for us. But some bad 
people have taken the land ; and even though Papa 
Charles is a count, he is not rich enoueh to send us 
all to school ; so our uncle, the Canon Lucien, teaches 
us many lessons. He is not cross, let me tell you, 
Panoria ; but he is — well, a little severe." 

"What, then, does he whip you?" asked Panoria., 

"No, he does not; but if he says we should be 
whipped, then Mamma Letitia hands us over to Nurse 
Mina Saveria ; and she, I promise you, does not let us 
off from the whipping." 

All this Eliza admitted as if with vivid recollections 
of the vigor of Nurse Saveria's arm. 

Panoria o-lanced toward the grotto amid the rocks. 

"Does he — Napoleon — ever get whipped?" she 
asked. 

"Indeed he does not," Eliza grumbled; " or not as 
often as the rest of us," she added. "And when he 
is whipped he does not even cry. You should hear 
Joseph, though. Joseph is the boy to cry; and so is 
Lucien. Pd be ashamed to cry as they do. Why, if 



l6 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

you touch those boys just with your Httle finger, they 
go running to Mamma Letitia, crying that we've 
scratched the skin off." 

Panoria had her idea of such " cry-babies " of boys ; 
but Napoleon interested her most. 

"But, EHza," she said, "what does he say — Na- 
poleon — when he talks to himself in his grotto over 
there ? " 

"You shall hear," Eliza replied. "Let me go and 
peep in, to see if he is there. But no ; hush ! See, here 
he comes ! Come ; we will hide behind the lilac-bush, 
and hear what Napoleon says." 

" But will not your nurse, Saveria, come to look 
for us ? " asked Panoria, who had not forgotten Eliza's 
reference to the nurse's heavy hand. 

"Why, no; Saveria will be busy for an hour yet, 
picking fruit for our table from my uncle the canon's 
garden. We have time," Eliza explained. 

So the two little orirls hid themselves behind the 
lilac-bushes that o-rew beside the rocks in which was 
the little cave which they called Napoleon's grotto. 
The bush concealed them from view ; two pairs of wide- 



IN NAPOLEONS GROTTO. 1 7 

Open black eyes peering curiously between the lilac- 
leaves were the only signs of the mischievous young 
eavesdroppers. 

The boy who was walking thoughtfully toward the 
grotto did not notice the little girls. He was about 
seven years old. In fact, he was seven that very day. 
For he was born in the big, bare house in Ajaccio, 
which was his home, on the fifteenth of August, 1776. 

He was an odd-looking boy. He was almost elf- 
like in appearance. His head was big, his body small, 
his arms and leo-s were thin and spindlino-. His lone, 
dark hair fell about his face ; his dress was careless 
and disordered ; his stockings had tumbled down over 
his shoes, and he looked much like an untidy boy. 
But one scarcely noticed the dress of this boy. It was 
his face that held the attention. 

It was an Italian face ; for this boy's ancestors had 
come, not so many generations before, from the Tuscan 
town of Sarzana, on the Gulf of Genoa — the very 
town from which " the brave Lord of Luna," of whom 
you may read in Macaulay's splendid poem of " Hora- 
tius," came to the sack of Rome. 



l8 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

Save for his odd appearance, with his big head and 
his htde body, there was nothing to particularly dis- 
tinguish the boy Napoleon Bonaparte from other 
children of his own age. 

Now and then, indeed, his face would show all the 
shifting emotions of ambition, passion, and determina- 
tion ; and his eyes, though not beautiful, had in them 
a piercing and commanding gleam that, with a glance, 
could influence and attract his companions. 

Whatever happened, these wonderful eyes — even in 
the boy — never lost the power of control which they 
o-ave to their owner over those about him. With a look 
through those eyes, Napoleon would appear to conceal 
his own thoughts and learn those of others. They could 
flash in anger if need be, or smile in approval ; but, 
before their fixed and piercing glance, even the boldest 
and most inquisitive of other e3/es lowered their lids. 

Of course this eye-power, as we might call it, grew 
as the boy grew ; but even as a little fellow in his 
Corsican home, this attraction asserted itself, as many 
a playfellow and foeman could testify, from Joey Fesch, 
his boy-uncle, to whom he was much attached, to Joseph 



IN NAPOLEONS GROTTO. 1 9 

his older brother, with whom he was always quarrelling, 
and Giacommetta, the little black-eyed girl, about whom 
the boys of Ajaccio teased him. 

The little orhds behind the lilac-bush watched the 
boy curiously. 

"Why does he walk like that?" asked Panoria, as 
she noted Napoleon's advance. He came slowly, his 
eyes fixed on the sea, his hands clasped behind his back. 

"Our uncle the canon," whispered Eliza; " he walks 
just that way, and Napoleon copies him." 

"My, he looks about fifty!" said Panoria. "What 
do you suppose he is thinking about ? " 

" Not about us, be sure," Eliza declared. 

" I believe he's dreaming," said mischievous Panoria; 
" let us scream out, and see if we can frighten him." 

" Silly! you can't frighten Napoleon," Eliza asserted, 
clapping a hand over her companion's mouth. " But 
he could frighten you. I have tried it." 

Napoleon stood a moment looking seaward, and 
tossed back his loncf hair, as if to bathe his forehead 
in the coolino- breezes. Then enterinor the o-rotto, he 
flung himself on its rocky floor, and, leaning his head 



20 



THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 



Upon his hand, seemed as lost in meditation as any 
gray old hermit of the hills, all unconscious of the four 

black eyes which, 
filled with curios- 
ity and fun, were 
watching him from 
behind the lilac- 
bush. 





" Here, at least," the boy 
said, speaking aloud, as if 
he wished the broad sea to share his thoughts, " here 
I am master ; here I am alone ; here no one can com- 



IN NAPOLEONS GROTTO. 21 

mand or control me. I am seven years old to-day. 
One Is not a man at seven ; that I know. But neither 
is one a child when he has my desires. Our uncle, 
the Canon Lucien, tells me that Spartan boys were 
taken away from the women when they were seven 
years old, and trained by men. I wish I were a Spartan. 
There are too many here to say what I may and may 
not do, — Mamma Letitia, our uncle the canon. Papa 
Charles, Nurse Saveria, Nurse Camilla ; to say nothing 
of my boy-uncle Fesch, my brother Joseph, and sister 
Eliza; Uncle Joey Fesch is but four years older than I, 
my brother Joseph is but a year older, and Eliza is a 
year younger ! Even little Pauline has her word to 
put in against me. Bah ! why should they ? If now 
I were but the master at home, as I am here " — 

"Well, hermit! and what if you were the master?" 
cried Eliza from the lilac-bush. 

The two girls had kept silence as long as they could ; 
and now, to keep Panoria from speaking out, Eliza 
had interrupted with her question. 

With that, they both ran into the grotto. 

Napoleon was silent a moment, as if protesting 
against this irivasion of his privacy. Then he said, — 



2 2 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

"If I were the master, Eliza, I would make you 
both do penance for listening at doors ; " for it especially 
mortified this boy to be overheard talking to himself. 

" But here are no doors. Napoleon ! " cried Eliza, 
whirling about in the grrotto. 

" So much the worse, then," Napoleon returned hotly. 
" When there are no doors, one should be even more 
careful about intruding." 

" Pho ! hear the little lord," teased Eliza. " One 
would think he was the Emperor what's his name, or 
the Grand Turk." 

Napoleon was about to respond still more sharply, 
when just then a shrill voice rang through the grotto. 

"Eliza; Panoria ! Panoria ; Eliza ! " the call came. 
" Where are you, runaways? Where are you hidden?" 

" Here we are, Saveria," Eliza cried in reply, but 
making no move to retire. 

Napoleon would have put the girls out, but the next 
moment a tall and stout young woman appeared at the 
entrance of the erotto. She was dressed in black, with 
a black shawl draped over her high hair, and held by 
a silver pin. On her arm she carried a large basket 
filled with fine fruit, — pears, grapes, and figs. 



IN NAPOLEON S GROTTO. 27, 

" So here you are, in Napoleon's grotto ! " exclaimed 
Saveria the nurse, dropping with her basket on the 
ground. " Why did you run from me, naughty 
ones : 

Napoleon noted the basket's luscious contents, 

" Oh, a pear! Give me a pear, Saveria! " he cried, 
springing toward the nurse, and thrusting a hand into 
the basket. 

But Nurse Saveria hastily drew away the basket. 

"Why, child, child! what are you doing?" she 
exclaimed. "These are your uncle the canon's." 

Napoleon withdrew his hand as sharply as if a bee 
amid the fruit had stung him. 

"Ah, is it so?" he cried; but Panoria, not having 
before her eyes the fear of the Bonapartes' bugbear, 
" their uncle the canon," laughed loudly. 

" What funny people you all are ! " she exclaimed. 
" One needs but to cry, ' Your uncle the canon,' and 
down you all tumble like a house of cards. What ! is 
Saveria, too, afraid of him ? " 

" No more than I am," said Napoleon stoutly. 

" No more than you ! " laughed Panoria. " Why, 



24 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

Napoleon, you did not dare to even touch the pears 
of your uncle the canon." 

" Because I did not wish to, Panoria," replied Na- 
poleon. 

" Did not dare to," corrected Panoria. 

" Did not wish to," insisted Napoleon. 

" Well, wish it ! I dare you to wish it ! " cried 
Panoria, while Eliza looked on horrified at her little 
friend's suesiestion. 

By this time Saveria had led the children from the 
grotto, and, walking on ahead, was returning toward 
their home. She did not hear Panoria's "dare." 

" You may dare me," Napoleon replied to the chal- 
lenge of Panoria ; " but if I do not wish it, you gain 
nothing by daring me." 

"Ho! you are afraid, little boy!" cried Panoria. 

" I afraid?" and Napoleon turned his piercing glance 
upon the little girl, so that she quailed before it. 

But Panoria was an obstinate child, and she returned 
to the charge. 

" But if you did wish it, would you do it. Na- 
poleon ? " she asked. 



IN NAPOLEON S GROTTO. 25 

" Of course," the boy replied. 

" Oh, it is easy to brag," said Panoria ; " but when 
your great man, your uncle the canon, is around, you 
are no braver, I'll be bound, than little Pauline, or even 
Eliza here." 

By this time Eliza, too, had grown brave ; and she 
said stoutly to her friend, " What ! I am not brave, you 
say? You shall see." 

Then as Saveria, turning, bade them hurry on, Eliza 
caught Panorla's hand, and ran toward the nurse ; but 
as she did so, she said to Panoria, boastingly and 
rashly, — 

" Come into our house ! If I do not eat some of 
those very pears out of that very basket of our uncle 
the canon's, then you may call me a coward, Panoria ! " 

" Would you then dare ? " cried Panoria. " I'll not 
believe it unless I see you." 

Eliza was " in for it " now. " Then you shall see 
me!" she declared. " Come to my house. Mamma 
Letitia is away visiting, and I shall have the best 
chance. I promise you ; you shall see." 

" Hurry, then," said Panoria. " It is better than 



26 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

braving the black elves, this that you are to do, Eliza. 
For truly I think your uncle the canon must be an 
ogre." 

" You shall see," Eliza declared agfain ; and, running- 
after Nurse Saveria, they were soon in the narrow street 
in which, standing across the way from a little park, 
was the big, bare, yellowish-gray, four-story house in 
which lived the Bonaparte family, always hard pushed 
for money, and having but few of the fine things which 
so large a house seemed to call for. Indeed, they would 
have had scarcely anything to live on had it not been 
for this same important relative, " our uncle, the Canon 
Lucien," who spent much of his yearly salary of fifteen 
hundred dollars upon this family of his nephew, 
" Papa Charles," one of whom was now about to make 
a raid upon his picked and particular pears. 



THE canon's pears. 27 



CHAPTER TWO. 

THE canon's pears. 

When the little girls had left him, Napoleon re- 
mained for some moments standing in the mouth of 
his erotto. His hands were clasped behind his back, 
his head was bent, his eyes were fixed upon the sea. 

This, as I have told you, was a favorite attitude of 
the little boy, copied from his uncle the canon ; it 
remained his favorite attitude through life, as almost 
any picture of this remarkable man will convince you. 

The boy was always thoughtful. But this day he 
was especially so. For he knew that it was his birthday ; 
and while not so much notice was taken of children's 
birthdays when Napoleon was a boy as is now the 
custom, still a birthday was a birthday. 

So the day set the little fellow to thinking ; and, 
young as he was, he had yet much to remember. 

He felt that he ought to be as rich and important 
as the other boys whom he knew round about Ajaccio. 



28 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

There were Andrew Pozzo and Charles Abbatucci, 
for example. They had everything they wished ; their 
fathers were rich and powerful ; and they made fun of 
him, calling him " little frowsy head," and " down at 
the heel," just because his mother could not always 
look after his clothes, and keep him neat and clean. 

Napoleon could not see why they should be better 
off than was he. His father, Charles Bonaparte, was, 
he had heard them say at home, a count ; but of what 
o-ood was it to be a count, or a duke, if one had not 
palaces and treasure to show for it ? 

Napoleon knew that the big and bare four-story 
house in which he lived was by no means a palace ; 
and so far from having any treasures to spend, he 
knew, instead, that if it were not for the help of their 
uncle, the Canon Lucien, they would often go hungry 
in the big house on the little park. 

But there was one consolation. If he was badly 
off, so, too, were many other boys and girls in that 
Mediterranean island. For when Napoleon Bonaparte 
was a boy, there was much trouble in Corsica. That 
rocky, sea-washed, forest-crowned island of mountains 



THE canon's pears. 



29 



and valleys, queer customs and brave people, had been 
in rebellion, against its mas- 
ters — first, the republic of Ge- 
noa, and then against France. 



the: mother 

NAPOLEOtJ 




Tue 

rATME-R 



Napoleon's father, Charles 

Bonaparte, had been a Cor- 

sican politician and patriot, a 

follower of the p-reat Corsican leader, Paoli, who had 

spent many years of a glorious life in trying to lead 



30 



THE BOY I.IFE OF NAPOLEON. 



his fellow-Corsicans to liberty and self-government. 
But the attempt had been a failure ; and three months 
before the baby Napoleon was born, Charles Bona- 
parte had, with other Corsican leaders, given up the 
struggle. He submitted to the French power, took 
the oath of allegiance, and became a French citizen. 
And thus it came to pass that little Napoleon Bo- 
naparte, though an Italian by blood and family, was 
really by birth a French citizen. 

Still, all that did not help him much, if, indeed, he 
thought anything about it as he stood in his grotto 
looking out to sea. He was thinking of other things, 
— of how he would like to be great and strong and 
rich, so that he could 'be a leader of other boys, rather 
than be teased by them ; for little Napoleon Bonaparte 
did not take kindly to being teased, but would get 
very angry at his tormentors, and would bite and 
scratch and fight like any little savage. He had, as 
a child, what is known as an ungovernable temper, 
although he was able to keep it under control until 
the moment came when he could both say and do 
to his own satisfaction. 



THE CANONS PEARS. 3 1 

He loved his father and mother ; he loved his 
brothers and sisters ; he loved his uncle, the Canon 
Lucien ; he loved, more than all his other playmates 
and companions, his boy-uncle, fat, twelve-year-old Joey 
Fesch, who had taught him his letters, and been his 
admirer and follower from babyhood. 

But though he loved them all, he loved his own 
way best ; and he was bound to have it, however much 
his father might talk, his mother chide, or his uncle 
the canon correct him. So, as he stood in the grotto, 
remembering that on that day he was seven years old, 
he determined to let all his family see that he knew 
what he wished to become and do. He would show 
them, he declared, that he was a little boy, a baby, no 
longer ; they should know that he was a boy who 
would be a man long before other boys grew up, 
and would then show his family that they had never 
really understood him. 

At last he turned away and walked slowly toward 
home. The Bonaparte house was, as I have told you, 
a big, bare, four-story, yellow-gray house. It stood 
on a little narrow street, now called, after Napoleon's 



32 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

mother, Letitia Place, in the town of Ajaccio. The 
street was not over eight or ten feet wide ; but op- 
posite to the house was a httle park that allowed 
the Bonapartes to get both light and air — something 
that would otherwise be hard to obtain in a street 
only ten feet wide. 

Tired and thirsty from his walk through the sun- 
shine of the hot August afternoon, the boy started for 
the dining-room for a drink of water. As he opened 
the door in his quick, impetuous way, he heard a noise 
as of some one startled and fleeing. The swinging 
sash of the long French window opposite him shut 
with a bang, and Napoleon had a glimpse of a bit of 
white skirt, caught for an instant on the window- 
fastening. 

"Ah, ha! it was not a bird, then, that fluttering," 
he said. " It was a girl. One of my sisters. Now, 
which one, I wonder ? and why did she run ? I do not 
care to catch her. It is no sport playing with 
CTirls." 

So little curiosity did he have in the matter, that 
he did not follow on the track of the fugitive, nor 



THE CANON S PEARS. 33 

even go to the window to look out ; but, walking up to 
the sideboard, he opened it to take the water-pitcher 
and get a drink. 

As he did so, he started. There stood the basket 
of fruit which Saveria had filled so carefully with fruit 
for his uncle the canon. But now the basket was only 
half filled. Who had taken the fruit? 

He clapped his hands together in surprise ; for 
the fruit of his uncle the canon was something no one 
In the house dared to touch. Punishment swift and 
sure would descend upon the culprit. 

"But, look!" he said half-aloud ; "who has dared 
to touch the fruit of my uncle the canon ? Touch it ? 
My faith ! they have taken half of it. Ah, that skirt ! 
Could it have been — it must have been one of my 
sisters. But which one ? " 

As he stood thus wondering, his eyes still fixed 
upon the rifled basket of fruit, he heard behind him 
a voice that tried to be harsh and stern, calling his 
name. 

"Napoleon!" cried the new-comer, "what are you 
doing at the sideboard ? and why have you opened it ? 



34 



THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 



You know we have forbidden you to take anything to 
eat before mealtime. What have you done ? " 

It was the voice of his uncle, the Canon Lucien. 
Napoleon, turning- at the question, met the glance of 
his uncle fastened upon him. The Canon Lucien Bo- 
naparte was a funny-looking, fat little man, as bald as 
he was good-natured, — and that was very bald, — and 
with a smooth, ordinary-appearing face, only remarkable- 
for the same sharp, eagle-like look that marked his 
nephew Napoleon when he, too, became a man. 

Napoleon looked at his uncle the canon with indig- 
nation and denial on his face. " Why, my uncle, I have 
taken nothing ! " he declared. 

Then suddenly he remembered how he had been 
discovered by his uncle standing before the half- emp- 
tied basket of fruit. Could it be that the old gende- 
man suspected him of pilfering ? Would he dare accuse 
him of the crime ? 

At the thouorht his face flushed red and hot. For 
you must know, boys and girls, that sometimes the fear 
of being suspected of a misdeed, even when one is 
absolutely innocent, brings to the face the flush that 




• / neuer lie, uncle ; you hnow I never lie ! ' said Napoleon. " 



THE CANON S PEARS. '^'] 

is considered a sign of guilt, and thus people are mis- 
understood and wrongfully accused. When one is 
high-spirited this is more liable to occur. It was so, 
at this moment, with the little Napoleon. His con- 
fused air, his flushed face, even his look of indignant 
denial, joined as evidence against him so strongly that 
his uncle the canon said sharply, " Come, you, Napo- 
leon ! do not lie to me now." 

At that remark all the boy's pride was on fire. 

" I never lie, uncle ; you know I never lie ! " he 
cried hotly. 

But Uncle Lucien was so certain of the boy's 
guilt that he mistook his pride for impudence. And 
yet he was such a good-natured old fellow, and loved 
his nieces and nephews so dearly, that he tried to 
soften and belittle the theft of his precious fruit. 

" No harm is done," he said, " if you but tell me 
what you have done. The fruit can be replaced, and 
I will say nothing, though you know you are forbidden 
to meddle with my fruit. But I do not love to see 
you doing wrong. I will not tolerate a lie. I do not 
know just what you have done ; but if you will tell 



38 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

me the truth, I will — of course I will — pardon you. 
Why did you take my fruit ? " 

" I took nothing, uncle," the boy declared. " It 
was " — then he stopped. Suppose it had been taken 
by one of his sisters, or by Panoria, their guest ? The 
flutter of the departing skirt, as he came into the room, 
assured him it was one of these. But which one ? 
And why should he accuse the little girls ? It was not 
manly, and he wished to be a man. 

More than this, he was angry to think that he had 
been suspected, more angry yet to think he had been 
accused by good Uncle Lucien, and furiously angry to 
think that his word was doubted ; so he said nothing 
further. 

"Ah, so! It was — you, then," the canon said, 
shaking his head in sorrowful belief. 

" No ; I did not say so ! " exclaimed Napoleon. " It 
was not I." 

" Take care, take care, my son," the canon said, 
very nearly losing his temper over what he considered 
Napoleon's insincerity. " You cannot deceive me. 
See ! look at yourself in the glass. Your face betrays 
you. It is red with shame.'' 



THE CANON S PEARS. 39 

"Then is my color a liar, uncle; but I am not," 
Napoleon insisted. 

"What were you doing here, all alone?" asked 
his uncle. 

" I was thirsty," replied the nephew. " I did but 
come for a drink of water." 

"That perhaps is so," said Uncle Lucien. "There 
is no harm in that. You came for a drink of water ; 
but, how was it after that, — eh, my friend ? " 

"That is all, uncle," replied Napoleon. 

"And the water? Have you taken a drink of it, 
yet ? " 

" No, uncle ; not yet." 

The canon again shook his head doubtingly. 

"See, then," he declared, "you came for a drink 
of water. You took no drink; the sideboard stands 
open ; my fruit has disappeared. Napoleon, this is 
not rio-ht. You have done a wronof. Come, tell me 
the truth. If it is not as you say, if you have lied 
to me, much as I love you, I will have you punished. 
It is wicked in you, and I will not be merciful." 

As the canon said this with raised voice and warn- 



40 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

ing finger, Napoleon's father, " Papa Charles," entered 
the room. With him came Napoleon's brother Joseph, 
two years older than he, and his twelve-year-old uncle- 
Joey Fesch. Joey was Mamma Letitia's half-brother, 
a Swiss-Corsican boy. He was, as I have told you, 
Napoleon's firm supporter. 

They looked in surprise at Uncle Lucien and Na- 
poleon, and would have inquired as to the meaning of 
the attitude of the two. But the fact was, Napoleon 
had so many such moments of rebellion, that they gave 
it no immediate thought; and just then Charles Bona- 
parte had a serious political question which he wished 
to refer to the Canon Lucien. 

The two m.en at once began talking ; the two boys 
saw through the open window something that engaged 
their attention, and Napoleon was unnoticed. But still 
the little boy stood, too proud to move away, too angry 
to speak, and so filled with a sense of the injustice 
that was done him, that he remained with downcast 
eyes, almost rooted to the spot, while still the sideboard 
stood open, and the tell-tale basket stood despoiled 
within it. 



THE CANONS PEARS. 41 

The door opened again, and Saveria entered hastily. 
She went to the sideboard, took out the basket of fruit, 
and then you may be sure there was an exclamation 
that attracted the attention of all in the room. 

" For mercy's sake ! " she cried. " Who has taken 
the canon's fruit ? " 

"Ah, yes, who?" echoed Uncle Lucien, wheeling 
about, and laying his hand upon Napoleon's shoulder. 
"Behold, Saveria! here is the culprit. He has taken 
my fruit." 

Napoleon pushed away his uncle's hand. 

"It is not so ! " he said ; but he grew pale as he 
spoke. " I have not touched it." 

"But some one has. Hear me, Saveria!" the 
canon commanded ; for in that house he had quite as 
much to say as the Father and Mother Bonaparte. 
" Call in the other children. We will soon settle 
this." 

All were soon in the room, — the two little orirls, 
Joseph, and Uncle Joey Fesch, even baby Lucien, who 
was named for his uncle the canon. The children 
made a charming group ; but they looked at Napoleon 



42 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

with curiosity and surprise, wondering into what new 
trouble he had fallen. For the solemn manner in 
which they had been called together, the grave looks 
of Papa Charles, of Uncle Lucien, and of Nurse 
Saveria, led them all to believe that something really 
serious had happened in the Bonaparte household. 



THE ACCUSATION. 43 



CHAPTER THREE. 

THE ACCUSATION. 

" Now, then, children, hsten to me, and answer, he 
who is the guihy one," Charles Bonaparte said, facing 
the group of children. "Who is it that has taken the 
fruit from the basket of your uncle the canon ? " 

Each child declared his or her innocence, though 
one miofht imag^ine that Eliza's voice was not so out- 
spoken as the others. 

"And what do you say. Napoleon?" asked Papa 
Charles, turning toward the suspected one. 

" I have already said, Papa Charles, that it was 
not I," Napoleon answered, this time calmly and coolly; 
for his composure had returned. 

" That is a lie. Napoleon ! " exclaimed Nurse Saveria, 
who, as the trusted servant of the Bonaparte family, 
spoke just as she wished, and said precisely what she 
meant, while no one questioned her freedom. " That 
is a lie. Napoleon, and you know it ! " 



44 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

The boy sprang toward the nurse in a rage, and, 
Hfting his hand threateningly, cried, " Saveria ! if you 
were not a woman, I would" — and he simply shook 
his little fist at her, too angry even to complete his 
threat. 

" How now, Napoleon ! what would you do ? " his 
father exclaimed. 

But Saveria only laughed scornfully. " It must 
have been you. Napoleon," she said. " I have not left 
the pantry since I placed the basket of fruit in this 
sideboard. No one has come in through the door ex- 
cept you and your uncle the canon. Who else, then, 
could have taken the fruit? You will not say" — and 
here she laughed again — "that it is your uncle the 
canon who has stolen his own fruit ? " 

" Ah, but I wish it had been I," said Uncle Lucien, 
smiling sadly ; for it sorely disturbed his good-nature to 
have such a scene, and to be a witness of what he be- 
lieved to be Napoleon's obstinacy and untruthfulness. 
" I would surely say so, even if I had to go without my 
supper for the disobedient act." 

" But," suggested Napoleon, in a broken voice, 



THE ACCUSATION. 45 

touched with the shame of appearing to be a tell-tale, 
"it is possible for some one to come in here through 
the window." 

" Bah ! " cried Saveria. " Do not be a silly too. 
No one has come through the window. You are the 
thief, Napoleon. You have taken the fruit. Come, I 
will punish you doubly — first for thieving, and then 
for lying." 

But as she crossed as if to seize the boy, Napoleon 
sprang toward his uncle for refuge. 

" Uncle Lucien ! I did not do it ! " he cried. " They 
must not punish me ! " 

" Tell the truth. Napoleon," his father said. " That 
is better than lying." 

" Yes, tell the truth, Napoleon, ' repeated his uncle ; 
" only by confession can you escape punishment." 

" Ah, yes ; punishment — how does that sound, Na- 
poleon ? " whispered Joseph in his ear. " You had 
better tell the truth. -Saveria's whip hurts." 

" And so does my hand, rascal ! " cried Napoleon, 
enraged at the taunts of his brother. And he sprang 
upon Joseph, and beat and bit him so sharply that the 



46 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

elder boy howled for help, and Uncle Joey Fesch was 
obliged to pull the brothers apart. For Joseph and 
Napoleon were forever quarrelling ; and Uncle Joey 
Fesch was kept busy separating them, or smoothing 
over their squabbles. 

As Uncle Joey Fesch drew Napoleon away, he said, 
" Tell them you took the fruit, and they will pardon 
you. Is it not so. Uncle Lucien ? " he added, turning 
to the canon. 

" Assuredly, Joey Fesch," the Canon Lucien replied. 
" Sin confessed is half forgiven." 

But Napoleon only stamped his foot. " Why should 
I confess?" he cried. "What should I confess? I 
should lie if I did so. I will not lie! I tell you I did 
not take any of my uncle's fruit ! " 

" Confess," urged Joseph. 

" 'Fess," lisped baby Lucien. 

" Confess, dear Napoleon," sister Pauline begged. 

Only Eliza remained quiet. 

" Napoleon," said the Canon Lucien, who, as head 
of the Bonaparte family, and who, especially because he 
was its main support, was given leadership in all home 



THE ACCUSATION. 47 

affairs, " we waste time with you ; for you are but an 
obstinate boy. At first I felt sorry for you, and would 
have excused you, but now I can do so no longer. 
See, now ; I give you five minutes by my watch in which 
to confess your wrong-doing. You ask for my protec- 
tion. I am certain of your guilt. But I open a door 
of escape. It is the door to pardon; it is confession. 
Profit by it. See, again," — here the canon took out 
his watch, — "it is now five minutes before seven. If, 
when the clock strikes seven, you have not confessed, 
Saveria shall give you a whipping. Am I right, brother 
Charles?" 

" You are right. Canon," replied Papa Charles. " If 
within five minutes by your watch Napoleon has not 
confessed, Saveria shall give him the whip." 

" The whip is for horses and dogs, but not for 
boys," Napoleon declared, upon whom this threat of 
the whip always had an extraordinary effect. " I am 
not a beast." 

"The whip is for liars, Napoleon," returned Papa 
Charles ;" for liars and children who disobey." 

"Then, you are cruel to lay it over me; you are 



48 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

cruel and unjust," declared the boy. " For I am not 
a liar ; I am not disobedient. I will not be whipped ! " 

As he spoke, the boy's eyes flashed defiance. He 
crossed his arms on his breast, lifted his head proudly, 
planted himself sturdily on his feet, and fiung at them 
all a look of minted indignation and determination. 

Supper was ready ; and the family, all save Napo- 
leon, seated themselves at the table. The five minutes 
granted him by the canon had run into a longer time, 
when little Pauline, distressed at sio;ht of her brother 
standing pale and grave in front of the open sideboard 
and the despoiled basket of fruit, rose from her chair ; 
approaching him, she whispered, "Poor boy! they will 
give you the whip. I am sure of it. Hear me ! While 
they are not looking, run away. See ! the window is 
open." 

"Run away? Not I!" came Napoleon's answer in 
an indignant whisper. " I am not afraid." 

"But I am," said Pauline. " I do not wish them to 
whip you. I shall cry. Run, Napoleon! run away!" 

The perspiration stood in beads on the boy's sallow 
forehead ; but he said nothing. 



THE ACCUSATION. 49 

" Ask Uncle Lucien's pardon, Napoleon ; ask Papa 
Charles's pardon, if you will not run away," Pauline 
next whispered ; "or let me. Come ! may I not do it 
for you ? " 

Napoleon's hand dropped upon Pauline's shoulder, as 
if to keep her back from such an action ; but he said 
nothing, 

" Pauline, leave your brother," Charles Bonaparte 
said. " He is a stubborn and undutiful boy. I forbid 
you to speak to him." 

Then turning to his son, he said, " Napoleon, we 
have given you more than the time offered you for 
reflection. Now, sir, come and ask pardon for your mis- 
deed, and all will be over." 

" Yes, come," said Uncle Lucien. 

Napoleon remained silent. 

" Do you not hear me, Napoleon ? " his father said. 

" Yes, papa," replied the boy. 

"Well?" 

Pauline pushed her brother ; but he would not move. 
" Go ! do go ! " she said. Instead, Napoleon drew away 
from her. Uncle Joey Fesch took Napoleon by the arm. 



50 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

and sought to draw him toward the table. Even Joseph 
rose and beckoned him to come. But the boy made no 
motion toward the proffered pardon. 

" Stupid boy ! Obstinate pig ! " cried Joseph ; " why 
do you not ask pardon ? " 

" Because I have done no evil," replied Napoleon. 
" You are the stupid one ; you are the pig, I say. Did 
I not tell you I did not touch the fruit ? " 

" Still obstinate ! " exclaimed " Papa Charles," turning 
away from his son. " He does not wish for pardon. He 
is wicked. Saveria! take this headstrong boy to the 
kitchen, and lay the whip upon him well, do you hear? 
He has deserved it." 

Napoleon fled to the corner, and stood at bay. Uncle 
Joey Fesch joined him, as if to protect and defend him. 
But when big and strong Nurse Saveria bore down upon 
them both. Uncle Joey, after an unsuccessful attempt to 
drag Napoleon with him, turned from the enemy, and 
sprang through the open window. 

Then Saveria flung her arms about the little Napo- 
leon, and, in spite of his kickings and scratchings, bore 
him from the room, while all laughed except Pauline. 



THE ACCUSATION. 5 I 

She stuffed her finders Into her ears to shut out the 
sound of her brother's cries. But she had no need to 
do this. No sound came from the punishment chamber. 
For not a sound, not a cry, not even a sigh, escaped from 
the boy who was bearing an unmerited punishment. 



^2 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 



CHAPTER FOUR. 

BREAD AND WATER. 

You will, no doubt, wonder what Napoleon's mother 
was doing while her little son was undergoing his unjust 
punishment. Perhaps if she had been at home things 
would not have turned out so badly with the boy ; for 
" Mamma Letitia," as the Bonaparte children called their 
beautiful mother, had a way about her that none of them 
could resist. She had much more will and spirit, she 
saw things clearer and better, than did " Papa Charles." 

Indeed, Napoleon said when he was a man, recalling 
the days of his boyhood in Ajaccio, " I had to be quick 
when I wished to do anything naughty, for my Mamma 
Letitia would always restrain my warlike temper ; she 
would not put up with my defiance and petulance. Her 
tenderness was severe, meting out punishment and re- 
ward with equal justice, — merit and demerit, she took 
both into account." 

So, you see. she would probably have understood that 



BREAD AND WATER. 53 

Napoleon spoke the truth, and that it was some one else 
who had taken the fruit from the basket of their uncle 
the canon. But Mamma Letitia was not at home. She 
had gone to Melilli, in the country beyond Ajaccio, to 
visit her mother and step-father — the father and mother 
of her half-brother, " Uncle Joey Fesch," as the Bona- 
parte children called him. Melilli was in the midst of 
fields and forests and luscious vineyards, and it was a 
Sfreat treat for the children to q-q there to visit their 
grandmother. 

Sometimes their mother would take one or two of the 
children with her ; but on this visit she had gone alone. 
That very evening her husband was to join her, and 
there had been great contention among the children 
as to which of them should accompany their father. 

Before leaving the supper-table " Papa Charles" an- 
nounced that their Uncle Santa's carriage would be at 
the door in half an hour ; that Uncle Joey Fesch would 
drive ; and that Joseph and Lucien and Eliza — " the good 
children," as he called them — should go with him to 
Melilli to visit their Grandmother Fesch, and bring back 
Mamma Letitia. 



54 



THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 



Joseph exulted loudly ; Eliza said nothing ; and baby 

Lucien crowed his delight. But Pauline slipped out into 

the pantry where Napoleon stood silent and still defiant. 

"I am to stay with you, brother," she said. "Will 

you be good to me ? " 

Napoleon slipped his arm about his 
little sister's neck; but just then his 
father came from the dining-room, and 
the boy drew up again, haughty and 
hard. 

"Well, Napoleon," said his father, 
stopping an instant before the boy, " I 
hope you are sorry and subdued. Will 
you now ask your Uncle Lucien's par- 
don?" 

Napoleon looked his father full in 
the face. " I did not take that fruit, 
papa," he said. 

"What! stubborn still?" his father cried. "See, 
then ; it shall not be said in my home that an obstinate 
little fellow like you can rule the house. Since the 
whip has not conquered you, we will try what starving 




' What ! Stubborn still ? ' 



BREAD AND WATER. 55 

will do. Listen ! I am to go to Melilli for Mamma Leti- 
tia. Joseph, Eliza, and Lucien, our three good ones, 
shall go with me ; we shall be gone for three days. As 
for you, Napoleon, you shall remain here, and shall have 
only bread and water, unless, indeed, before our return 
you ask pardon from your uncle the canon." 

Pauline looked sadly at Napoleon, and caught his 
hand. Then she asked her father, " But he may have 
a little cheese with his bread, may he not, papa?" 

" Well — yes " — her father yielded. " But only com- 
mon cheese, Pauline ; not broccio." 

Now, broccio was the favorite cheese of the Corsican 
children, and Pauline protested. 

" Oh, yes, papa ! let him have broccio, papa," she 
said. "Why, broccio is the best cheese in Corsica!" 

"And that is why Napoleon shall not have it," re- 
plied her father. "Broccio is for good boys and girls; 
and Napoleon is not good." 

As he said this he glanced at Napoleon sharply, as if 
he really hoped for and expected a word of repentance, 
a look of entreaty. But Napoleon said nothing. He 
looked even more haughty and unyielding than ever ; 



56 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

and his father, with a word of farewell only to Pauline, 
left the room. 

" Poor Napoleon," said Pauline pityingly, as their 
father closed the door. " See, I will stay by you. But 
why will you not ask for pardon ? " 

" Because pardon is for the guilty, Pauline," Napoleon 
replied ; " and I am not guilty." 

" And will you never ask it ? " 

" Never," her brother said firmly. 

"But, O Napoleon!" cried the little girl, "what if 
they should always give you just bread and water and 
cheese ? " 

" And if they should, I would not give in," Napoleon 
answered. "What can I do ? I am not master here." 

Pauline gave a great sigh of sympathy. The thought 
of never having anything to eat but bread and water and 
a little cheese was too much for her courage. 

" I would confess anything, rather," she said. " I 
would ask pardon three times a day." 

" And I would not," said Napoleon. " But then, I 
am a man." 

Just then the three children who were to accompany 



BREAD AND WATER. 57 

their father to MilelH, passed through the pantry, for 
they had been to bid Nurse Saveria good-by. Joseph 
caught the last word. 

" A man, are you ! " he cried. " Then, why not be a 
man, and not a baby ? " 

"Bah, rascal! and who is the greater baby?" his 
brother responded. "It is he who cries the loudest 
when things go wrong ; and I never cry." 

Joseph said nothing further except, "Good-by, obsti- 
nate one ! " 

" Good-by," lisped baby Lucien. 

But Eliza said nothing. She did not even glance at 
Napoleon as she passed him ; and he simply looked at 
her, without a word of accusation or farewell. 

The three days passed quietly, though hungrily, for 
Napoleon. Uncle Lucien said nothing to influence the 
boy, though he looked sadly, and sometimes wistfully, at 
him ; and Pauline tried to sweeten the bread and water 
and cheese as much as possible by her sympathy and 
companionship. 

Of this last, however, Napoleon did not wish much. 
He spent much of the time in his grotto, brooding over 



58 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

his wrongs, and thinking how he would act if people 
tried to treat him thus when he became a man. 

The second day he dragged his toy cannon to his 
grotto, and made believe he was a Corsican patriot, in- 
trenched in his fortifications, and holdingf the whole 
French army at bay ; for though Corsica was a French 
possession, the people were still smarting under their 
wrongs, and hated their French oppressors, as they 
termed them. Some years after, when he was a young 
man. Napoleon, talking about the home of his boyhood 
and the troubles of Corsica, said, " I was born while 
my country was dying. Thirty thousand French thrown 
upon our shores, drowning the throne of liberty in blood 
— such was the horrid sight that first met my view. 
The cries of the dying, the groans of the oppressed, 
tears of despair, surrounded my cradle at my birth." 

It was not quite as bad as all that. But Napoleon 
liked to use big words and dramatic phrases. It had 
been, in fact, very much like this before Napoleon was 
born. He had heard all the stories of French tyranny 
and Corsican courage, and, like a true Corsican, was hot 
with wrath against the enslavers of his country, as he 



BREAD AND WATER, 59 

called the French. So he found an especial pleasure 
in bombarding all France with his toy gun from his 
grotto ; and as he then felt very bitter indeed because 
of his treatment at home, you may be sure the French 
army was horribly butchered in the boy's make-believe 
battle before Napoleon's grotto. 

Then he went back for his bread and water. 

As he approached the house, he found that he was 
begfinninof to rebel at the bread and water diet. 

Bread and water alone, with just a little cheese, be- 
gin to grow monotonous to a healthy boy with a good 
appetite, after two or three days. 

Suddenly Napoleon had a brilliant idea. "The shep- 
herd boys ! " he exclaimed. 

He hurried to the house, took from Saveria the 
bread she had put aside for him, and was speedily out 
of the house ao-ain. 

This time he took his way to the grazing-lands, 
where, upon the slopes of the grand mountains that 
wall in the town of Ajaccio, the shepherd boys were 
tending their scattered herds. 

"Who will exchange chestnut bread for the best 



6o THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

town bread in Ajaccio ? " he demanded. "I will give 
piece for piece." 

Those shepherd boys led a lonely sort of life, and 
welcomed anything that was novel. Then, too, they 
were as tired of their bread, made from pounded chest- 
nuts, as was Napoleon of Saveria's wheat bread. 

So Napoleon found a ready response to his offer. 

" Here ! I'll do it ! " — " and I " — " and I " — " and 
I " — came the answers, in such numbers that Napoleon 
saw that his little stock would soon be exhausted ; and, 
indeed, he was not overfond of chestnut bread. 

So he improved on his idea. 

" Piece for piece, I will exchange, as I offered," he an- 
nounced. " But there are too many of you. See ! he who 
will o-ive me the bies^est slice of broccio shall have first 
choice for the bread, and the next -biggest, the next." 

This put a different face on the transaction, but it 
added spice to the operation ; and Napoleon actually 
succeeded in getting for his stale home bread, goodly 
sized pieces of fresh chestnut bread, and enough of the 
much-loved broccio, and bunches of luscious grapes, " to 
boot," to provide him with a generous meal. 



BREAD AND WATER. 



6l 



But the next day the shepherd boys rebelled ; they 
told Napoleon that his bread was stale, and not good. 
They preferred their chestnut bread. 

" But if you will look after our sheep while we go 
into the town," said one of them, " we will give you 
some of our bread." 




■'He tossed his dry bread to the shepherd boys." 



This, however, did not suit Napoleon. " I am not 
one to tend sheep," he answered. " Keep your bread. 
It is not so good that one wishes to eat it twice ; and 
— here, I pity you for having always to eat that stuff. 
Take mine ! " 



62 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

With that, he tossed his store of dry bread to the 
shepherd boys, and, walking back to town, ran in to visit 
his foster mother ; that is, the woman wlio had been 
his nurse when he was a baby. 

Nurse Camilla, as he called her, or sometimes " fos- 
ter-mamma Camilla," was now the widow Ilari ; but 
since her husband had been killed in one of those ter- 
rible family quarrels known as a Corsican vendetta, she 
had lived in a little house on one of the narrow streets 
of Ajaccio, not far from the Bonapartes. 

She was very fond of her baby, as she called Napo- 
leon ; and when he told her of his disgrace at home, she 
said, — 

" Bah ! the sillies ! Do they not know a truth-teller 
when they see one ? And so they would keep you on 
bread and water? Not if Nurse Camilla can prevent it. 
See, now ! here is a plenty to eat, and just what my own 
boy likes, does he not? Eat, eat, my son, and never 
mind the stale bread of that stingy Saveria." 

Then she petted and caressed the boy she so adored ; 
she gave him the best her house afforded, and sent him 
away to his own home satisfied and filled, but especially 



BREAD AND WATER. 6^ 

jubilant, I fear, because he had got the best, as he 
termed it, of the home tyranny, and shown how he was 
able to do for himself even when he was driven to ex- 
tremities. 

It was this ability to use all the conditions of life for 
his own benefit, and to turn even privation and defeat 
into victory, that gave to Napoleon, when he became a 
man, that genius of mastery that made this neglected 
boy of Corsica the foremost man of all the world. 



64 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 



CHAPTER FIVE. 

A WRONG RIGHTED. 

It was the third day of the family's absence from the 
Bonaparte house. Napoleon had been at his favorite 
resort, — the grotto that overlooked the sea. He had 
been brooding over his fancied wrongs, as well as his 
real ones ; he had wished he could be a man to do as he 
pleased. He would free Corsica from French tyranny, 
make his father rich, and his mother free from worry, 
and, in fact, accomplish all those impossible things that 
every boy of spirit and ambition is certain he could do 
if he micfht but have the chance. 

As he approached his home, he saw little Panoria 
swincrino- on the o-ate. She was waiting for her friend 
Eliza ; for she had learned from Pauline that the absent 
ones were to return that evening from their visit to 
Melilli. 

Panoria, as you have learned, was a bright litde girl, 
who spoke her mind, and had no great awe for the 



A WRONG RIGHTED. 65 

Bonapartes — not even for the mighty Canon Lucien, 
the all-powerful Nurse Saveria, nor the masterful little 
Napoleon. 

In fact, Napoleon stood more in awe of Panoria than 
she did of him. For the boy was, as boys and girls say 
to-day, "sweet on" the little Panoria, to whom he gave 
the pet name " La Giacommetta." Many a battle royal 
he had fought because of her with the fun-loving boys 
of Ajaccio, who found that it enraged Napoleon to tease 
him about the little girl, and therefore never let the 
opportunity slip to tease and torment him. 

" Ah, Napoleon, it is you ! " cried Panoria, as the boy 
approached her. "And what great stories have you 
been telling yourself to-day in your grotto ? " 

" I tell no great stories to myself, little one," Napo- 
leon replied with rather a lordly air. "I do but talk 
truth with myself." 

"Then should you talk truth with me, boy," the little 
lady replied, a trifle haughty also. " I am not to be 
called ' little one ' by such a mite as you. See ! I am 
taller than you ! " 

" Yes ; when one stands on a o-ate, one Is taller than 



66 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

he who stands on the ground," Napoleon admitted. 
" But when we stand back to back, who then is the 
taller ? See ! Call Pauline ! She shall tell us ! " 

" That shall she not, then," said the little girl, who 
loved to tease quite as well as most girls. " It would be 
better to go and make yourself look fine, than to stand 
here saying how big you are. Go look in the glass. 
Your stockings are tumbling over your shoes, and your 
jacket is all awry. How will your Mamma Letitia like 
that? Run, then ! I hear the carriaQ^e wheels ! In with 
you, little Down-at-the-heel ! " 

Smarting under the orirl's teasino-, and all the more be- 
cause it came from her. Napoleon sulked into the house. 

But Panoria still swung on the gate. When the car- 
riage stopped before the house, she ran to welcome 
her friend Eliza, and, with the returned family, entered 
the house. 

In the doorway the fat little canon, Uncle Lucien, 
received them. 

" Back ao-ain, uncle ! " cried Mamma Letitia in wel- 
come. "And how do you all? Where is Napoleon? 
Where is Pauline ? " 



A WRONG RIGHTED. 6"] 

The woman who spoke was Madame Letitia Bona- 
parte, the mother of Napoleon. She was a remarkable 
woman — remarkable for beauty, for ability, and for po- 
sition. Born a peasant, she became the mother of kings 
and queens ; reared in poverty, she became the mistress 
of millions. In her Corsican home she was house-mother 
and care-taker; and when, made great by her great son, 
she had every comfort and every luxury, she still re- 
mained house-mother and care-taker, looking" after her 
own household, and refusing to spend the money with 
which her son provided her, for fear that some day she 
or her famdly might need it. In all the troubles in 
Corsica she accompanied her husband to the mountain- 
retreat and the battle-field, encouraging him by her 
bravery, and urging him to patriotic purpose, until the 
end came, and Corsica was defeated and conquered. 
She carried all the worries and bore all the responsibili- 
ties of the Bonaparte household ; and it was only by her 
management and carefulness that the family was kept 
from absolute poverty. 

Her children loved her ; but they feared her too, and 
never thought of going contrary to her desires or com- 



68 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

mands. Late in life Napoleon once told a boy of whom 
he was fond the consequences of the only time he ever 
dared make fun of " Mamma Letitia." 

" Pauline and I tried it," he said ; " but It was a great 
mistake on our part. It was the only time in my life 
that my mother herself ever whipped me. I don't be- 
lieve Pauline ever forgot it. I never did." 

So it was Mamma Letitia who first spoke on the ar- 
rival at home ; and her first question was as to the chil- 
dren who had remained behind. 

"Where is Napoleon? Where is Pauline?" she 
asked 

Little Pauline sprang from behind her uncle the 
canon. 

" I am here, mamma," she said, and threw herself in 
her mother's arms. 

" But where is Napoleon ? " 

" He has not been good, mamma," Pauline replied. 
" See ! he is there, behind the door. He dare not come 
out. He pouts." 

" It is not so, mamma," said Napoleon, coming for- 
ward ; " I do dare. I am sad ; but I do not pout." 



I 



A WRONG RIGHTED. 69 

"And is he obstinate still, Uncle Luclen ? " Papa 
Charles asked. " Has he confessed, or asked your 
pardon ? " 

" He has done neither," Uncle Lucien replied. " I 
have never seen, in any child, such obstinacy as his." 

"Napoleon! Obstinacy!" exclaimed Mamma Le- 
titia. "Why, tell me; what has the boy done?" 

Then Uncle Lucien told the story of the rifled basket 
of fruit, excusing the lad as much as he could, although 
it must be confessed that the kind old canon was consid- 
erably " put out" by reason of what he called Napoleon's 
obstinacy. 

When, however, he reached that part of his story 
that described how he wished Napoleon to confess his 
misdeed, little Panoria, having, as I have told you, none 
of that awe of the Canon Lucien that his grand nephews 
and nieces had, burst in upon him, — 

" Why, then ! " she cried, " I should not think Napo- 
leon would confess. Poor boy ! he did not eat your 
fruit. Canon Lucien." 

"How, child! what do you say?" the canon ex- 
claimed. "He did not? Who did, then?" 



70 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

"Why, I did — and Eliza," Panoria replied 

" You — and Eliza ! " — " Eliza ! " — " Why, she said 
nothing ! " These were the exclamations of surprise 
and query that came from all present. 

" Why, surely ! " said Panoria; "and was it wrong ? 
Fruit is free to all here in Corsica. But Eliza was so 
afraid of her uncle the canon's fruit that I dared her to 
take some ; and we did. Napoleon never touched it. 
He knew nothino- of it." 

"My poor boy! my good child!" said the Canon 
Lucien, taking Napoleon in his arms. " Why did you 
not tell me this ? " 

" I thought it might have been Eliza who did it," 
replied the boy ; " but I am no tattle-tale, uncle. Be- 
sides, I would have said nothing on Panoria's account. 
She did not lie." 

" No more did Eliza," said Joseph. 

"Bah, imbecile!" said Napoleon, turning on his 
brother. "Where, then, is the difference between telling 
a lie and acting one by keeping quiet, if both mislead ? " 

You can readily believe that Napoleon was made 
much of by all his family because of his action. 



A WRONG RIGHTED. 7 1 

"That is the stuff that makes brave soldiers, leaders, 
and patriots, my son," his "Mamma Letitia" said. 
" Would that we all had more of it ! " 

For Madame Bonaparte knew that there was but 
little of the heroic in her handsome husband, " Papa 
Charles." He would flame out with wrath, and tell 
every one how much he meant to do against tyranny 
and wrono- ; he would even act with courage for 
a while ; but at last his love of ease and his dislike 
of trouble would o-et the better of his valor, and he 
would give up the struggle, bow before his opponents, 
and seek to gain by subserviency their favor and 
patronage. 

As for Eliza, she received a merited punishment 
— first, for her disobedience in taking what she had 
been told never to touch ; next, for her bravado in 
daring to act insolently toward her uncle, the canon ; 
then for her gluttony in eating so much of the fruit ; 
and finally, for her "bad heart," as her mother called 
it, for allowing her brother to suffer in her stead, and 
be punished for the wrong that she had committed. 

As for Napoleon, I fear that this little incident in 



72 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

his life made him feel more important than ever. He 
assumed a yet more masterful tone toward his com- 
panions and playmates, lorded it over Joseph, his 
brother, and made .repeated demands for loyalty upon 
Uncle Joey Fesch. 

But he did feel grateful toward Panoria for her 
timely word and generous conduct. He became more 
fond than ever of "La Giacommeta ; " and he brought 
her fruit and flowers, told her of all the great things 
he meant to do " when he was a man," and even in- 
vited her into his much loved and jealously guarded 
grotto ; and that, you may be sure, was a very great 
favor for Napoleon to grant. For his grotto was his 
own private and exclusive hermitage. 



THE BATTLE WITH THE SHEPHERD BOYS. 73 



CHAPTER SIX. 

THE BATTLE WITH THE SHEPHERD BOYS. 

The relations between Napoleon and the shepherd 
boys of the Ajaccio hillsides were not improved by his un- 
satisfactory food-trade during his bread-and-water days. 

Whenever he took his walks abroad in their direc- 
tion, the belligerent shepherd boys made haste to an- 
noy and attack him. They had no special love for 
the town boys ; there was, in fact, a long-standing 
rivalry and quarrel between them, as there often is 
between boys of different sections, or between boys of 
the country and the town. 

So you may be sure that Napoleon's solitary tramps 
along the hillsides were often disturbed and made un- 
pleasant. 

At last he determined upon the punishment or dis- 
comfiture of the shepherd boys. He roused his play- 
mates to action ; and one day they sallied forth in a 
body, to surprise and attack the shepherd boys. 



74 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

But there must have been a traitor in the camp of 
the town boys ; for, when they reached the hill pas- 
tures, they not only found the shepherd boys prepared 
for them, but they found them arrayed in force. Be- 
fore the town boys could rush to the attack, the shep- 
herd boys, eager for the fray, " took the initiative," 
as the war records say, and making- a dash upon the 
town boys, drove them ignominiously from the field. 

Napoleon disliked a check. Discomfited and morti- 
fied, he turned on big Andrew Pozzo, the leader of the 
town boys. 

" Why, you are no general ! " he cried. " You should 
have massed us all together, and held up firm against 
the shepherds. But, instead, you scattered us all ; and 
as for you — you ran faster than any of us ! " 

"Ho! little gamecock! little boaster!" answered 
Pozzo hotly. "You know it all, do you not? You'd 
better try it yourself. Captain Down-at-the-heel." 

" And I will, then! " cried Napoleon. " Come, boys, 
try it again ! Shall we be whipped by a lot of shepherd 
boys, garlic lovers, eaters of chestnut bread ? Never ! 
Follow me ! " 



THE BATTLE WITH THE SHEPHERD BOYS. 



/:) 



But the town boys had received all they wished, for 
one day. Only a portion of them followed Napoleon's 
lead ; and they turned about and fled before they even 
met the shepherd boys, so formidable seemed the array 
of those warriors of the hills. 

" Why, this will never do ! " Napoleon exclaimed, 
" It must not be said that we town boys have been 
whipped into slavery by these miserable ones of the 
mountains. At them again ! What ! You will not ? 
Then let us arrange a careful plan of attack, and try 
them another day. Will you do so ? " 

The boys promised ; for it is alwa)s easy to agree 
to do a thing at some later day. But Napoleon did 
not intend that the matter should be given up or post- 
poned. He went to his grotto, and carefully thought 
out a plan of campaign. 

The next day he gathered his forces about him, and 
endeavored to fire their hearts by a little theatrical effect. 

"What say you, boys, to a cartel?" he said. 

"A cartel?" 

" Yes ; a challenge to those miserable ones of the 
hih, darinor them to battle." 



76 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

" But those hill dwellers cannot read ; do you not 
know that, you silly?" Andrew Pozzo cried. "How, 
then, can you send a challenge?" 

" How but by word of mouth?" replied Napoleon. 
" See, here are Uncle Joey Fesch and big Ilari ; they 
shall go with their sticks, and stand before those shep- 
herd boys, and shall cry aloud " — 

"Shall we, then?" broke in big Ilari. "I will do 
no crying." 

Napoleon said nothing. He simply looked at the 
big fellow — looked at him — and went on as if there 
had been no interruption, — 

" And shall cry aloud, ' Holo, miserable ones ! holo, 
rascal shepherds ! The town boys dare you to fight 
them. Are you cowards, or will you meet them in 
battle ? ' This shall Uncle Joey Fesch cry out. He 
has a mighty voice." 

"And of course they will fight," sneered Andrew 
Pozzo. " Did you think they would not ? But shall we ? " 

"Shall we not, then?" answered Napoleon. "And 
if you will but follow and obey me, we will conquer 
those hill boys, as you never could if Pozzo led you on. 



THE BATTLE WITH THE SHEPHERD BOYS. 7/ 

For I will show you the trick of mastery. Of mastery, 
do you hear ? And those miserable boys of the sheep 
pastures shall never more play the victor over us boys 
of the town." 

It was worth trying, and the boys of that day and 
time were accustomed to give and take hard knocks. 

So Uncle Joey Fesch and big Tony Ilari, the bearers 
of the challenge, set off for the hill pastures ; and 
while they were gone Napoleon directed the prepara- 
tions of his forces. 

The heralds returned with an answer of defiance 
from the hill boys. 

"So! they boast, do they?" little Napoleon said. 
" We will show them how skill is better than streno-th. 
Remember my orders : stones in your pockets, the 
stick in your hand. Attention! In order! March!" 

In excellent order the little army set out for the 
hills. In the pastures where they had met defeat 
the day before they saw the straggling forces of the 
shepherd boys awaiting them. 

"Halt!" commanded the Captain Napoleon. 

" Let the challeno-ers o-o forward aeain," he directed. 



78 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

" Summon them to surrender, and pass under the yoke. 
Tell them we will be masters in Ajaccio." 

The big boy challengers obeyed the little leader's 
command ; and as they departed on their mission Na- 
poleon ordered his soldiers to quietly drop the stones 
they carried in their pockets, in a line where they stood. 
Then he planted a stick in the ground as a guide-post. 

The challengers came rushing back, followed by the 
jeers and sticks of the hill boys. 

"So! they will not yield? Then will we conquer 
them," Napoleon cried. "In order! Charge!" 

And up the slope, brandishing their sticks, charged 
the town boys. 

The hill boys were ready for them. They were 
bigger and stronger than the town boys, and the}' ex- 
pected to conquer by force. 

The two parties met. There was a brief rattle of 
stick against stick. But the hill boys were the stronger, 
and Napoleon gave the order to retreat. 

Down the hill rushed the town boys. After them, 
pell-mell, came the hill boys, flushed with victory and 
careless of consequences. 



THE BATTLE WITH THE SHEPHERD BOYS. 79 

Suddenly, as Napoleon reached his guide-post, he 
shouted in his shrill little voice, " Halt ! " And his army, 
knowing his intentions, instantly obeyed. 

"Stones!" he cried, and they scooped up their 
supply of ammunition. 

"About!" They faced the oncoming foe. 

" Fire ! " came his final order ; and, so fast and furious 
fell the shower of stones upon the surprised and unpre- 
pared hill boys, that their victorious columns halted, 
wavered, turned, broke, and fled. 

"Now! upon them! follow them! drive them!" 
rang out the little Captain Napoleon's swiftly given 
orders. 

They followed his lead. The hill boys, utterly routed, 
scattered in dismay. One-half of them were captured 
and held as prisoners, until Napoleon's two big chal- 
lengers, now acting as commissioners of conquest, re- 
ceived from the hill boys an unconditional surrender, 
an acknowledgment of the superiority of the town boys, 
and the humble promise to molest them no more. 

This was Napoleon's first taste of victorious war. 
But ever after he was an acknowledged leader of the 



8o THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

boys of Ajaccio. Andrew Pozzo was unceremoniously 
deposed from his self-assumed post of commander in 
all street feuds and forays. The old rivalry was a sore 
point with him, however ; and throughout his life he 
was the bitter and determined opponent of his famous 
fellow-Corsican, Napoleon. But you may be sure big 
Tony Ilari and the other boys paid court to the little 
Bonaparte's ability ; while as for Uncle Joey Fesch, he 
was prouder than ever of his nine-year-old nephew and 
commander. 



GOOD-BYE TO CORSICA. 



CHAPTER SEVEN. 

GOOD-BYE TO CORSICA. 

Meantime thingrs were eoine from bad to worse in 
the Bonaparte home. 

Careless " Papa Charles " made but little money, and 
saved none ; all the economy and planning of thrifty 
" Mamma Letitia " did not keep things from falling be- 
hind, and even the help of Uncle Lucien the canon was 
not sufficient. 

Charles Bonaparte had gained but little by his sub- 
mission to the French. The people in power flattered 
him, and gave him office and titles, but these brought in 
no money; and yet, because of his position, he was 
forced to entertain and be hospitable to the French offi- 
cers in Corsica. 

Now, this all took money; and there was but little 
money in the Bonaparte house to take. So, at last, 
after much discussion between the father and mother, — 
the father urging and the mother objecting, — the Bona- 



82 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

partes decided to sell a field to raise money ; and you 
can scarcely understand how bitter a thing this is to a 
Corsican. To part with a piece of land is, to him, like 
cutting off an arm. It hurts. 

Napoleon heard all of these discussions, and was 
sadly aware of the poverty of his home. He worried 
over it ; he wished he could know how to help his 
mother in her strues'les ; and he looked forward, more 
earnestly than ever, to the day when he should be a 
man, or should at least be able to do something toward 
helping out in his home. 

At last thinors took a turn. Old Kino^ Louis of 
France was dead; young King Louis — the sixteenth of 
the name — sat on the throne. There was trouble in 
the kingdom. There was a struggle between the men 
who wished to better thinofs and those who wished 
things to stay as they were. Among these latter were 
the governors of the French provinces or departments. 
In order to have things fixed to suit themselves, they 
selected men to represent them in the nation's assembly 
at Paris. 

The eovernor of Corsica was one of these men ; and 



GOOD-BYE TO CORSICA. 83 

by flattery and promises he won over to his side Papa 
Charles Bonaparte, and had him sent to Paris (or rather 
to Versailles, where the assembly met, not far from 
Paris) as a delegate from the nobility of Corsica. This 
sounded very fine ; but the truth is, " Papa Charles " 
was simply nothing more than " the governor's man," to 
do as he told him, and to work in his interests. 

One result of this, however, was that it made things 
a little easier for the Bonapartes ; and it gave them the 
opportunity of giving to the two older boys, Joseph and 
Napoleon, an education in France at the expense of the 
state. 

So when Charles Bonaparte was ready to sail to his 
duties in France, it was arranged that he should take 
with him Joseph, Napoleon, and Uncle Joey Fesch, 
Joseph was now eleven years old ; Napoleon was nine, 
and Uncle Joey was fifteen. 

Joseph and Uncle Joey were to be educated as 
priests ; Napoleon was to go to the military school at 
Brienne. But, at first, both the brothers were sent to 
a sort of preparatory school at Autun. 

Napoleon was delighted. He was to go out into 



/ 



84 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

the world. He was to be a man ; and yet, when the 
time came, he hated to leave his home. He was fond 
of his family ; indeed, his life was largely given up to 
remembering and helping his mother and brothers and 
sisters. He regretted leaving his dear grotto ; he was 
sorry to say good-by to Panoria — his favorite " La Gia- 
commetta." But his future had been decided upon by 
his father and mother, and he promised to do great 
things for them when he was old enough to be a captain 
in the army — even if it were the army of France. For, 
you see, he was still so earnest a Corsican patriot, that 
he wished rather to free Corsica than to defend France. 

" Who knows ? " he boasted one day to Panoria ; 
" perhaps I will become a colonel, and come back here 
and be a greater man than Paoli. Perhaps I may free 
Corsica. What would you think of that, Panoria ? " 

" I should think it funny for a boy who went to 
school in France to come away and fight France," said 
practical Panoria. 

But Napoleon would not see it in this way. He 
dreamed of glory, and believed he would yet be able 
to strike a blow for the freedom of Corsica. 



GOOD-BYE TO CORSICA. 85 

At last the day of departure arrived. There was a 
hngering leave-taking and a sorrowful one. For the 
first time, the Bonaparte boys were leaving their mother 
and their home. 

" Be good boys," she said to them ; '• learn all you 
can, and try to be a credit to your family. Upon you 
we look for help in the future. Be thrifty, be saving, do 
not get sick, and remember that, upon your work now, 
will depend your success in life." 

" Good-bye ! " cried Nurse Saveria. "When you come 
back I will have for you the biggest basket of fruit we 
can pick in the garden of your uncle the canon." 

" That you shall, boy," said Uncle Lucien, slipping 
his last piece of pocket-money into Napoleon's hand. 
" And take you this, for luck. You will do your best, I 
know you will, and you'll come back to us a great man. 
Don't forget your Uncle Lucien, you boy, when you are 
famous, will you ? " 

Napoleon smiled through his tears, and made a 
laughing promise in reply to his uncle's laughing de- 
mand. But, for all the fun of the remark, there was 
yet a strong groundwork of belief beneath this assertion 



86 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

of the Canon Lucien Bonaparte ; the old man was a 
shrewd observer. His friendship for the Httle Napoleon 
was strong. And in spite of all the boy's faults, — his 
temper, his ambition, his sullenness, his carelessness, 
and his selfishness, — Uncle Lucien still recognized in 
this nine-year-old nephew an ability that would carry 
him forward as he grew older. 

" Napoleon has his faults," he said, in talking over 
family matters with Mamma Letitia and Papa Charles 
the night before the departure for France ; " the boy is 
not perfect — what child is ? But those very faults will 
grow into action as he becomes acquainted with the 
world. I expect great things of the boy ; and mark my 
words, Letitia and Charles, it is of no use for you to 
think on Napoleon's fortune or his future. He will 
make them for himself, and you will look to him for 
assistance, rather than he to you. Joseph is the eldest 
son ; but, of this I am sure, Napoleon will be the head 
of this family. Remember what I say ; for, though I 
may not live to see it, some of you will — and will 
profit by it." 

They were all on the dock as the vessel sailed away. 



GOOD-BYE TO CORSICA. 87 

bearing- Papa Charles, Uncle Joey Fesch, and the two 
Bonaparte boys, from Ajaccio to Florence. 

Mamma Letitia was there, tearful, but smiling, with 
Eliza, and Pauline, and Baby Lucien ; so were Uncle 
Lucien the canon, and Aunt Manuccia, who had been 
their mother's housekeeper, with Nurse Saveria, and 
Nurse Ilaria, whom Napoleon called foster-mother, and 
even little Panoria, to whom Napoleon cried " Good-by, 
Giacommeta mia ! I'll come back some day." 

Then the vessel moved out into the harbor, and 
sailed away for Italy, while the tearful group on the dock 
and the tearful group on the deck threw kisses to one 
another until they could no longer make out faces or 
forms. 

The home tie was broken ; and Napoleon Bonaparte, 
a boy of nine and a half years, was launched upon life — 
a life the world was never to forget. 



THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 



CHAPTER EIGHT. 

AT THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL. 

The Bonaparte boys and their father stopped a while 
in Florence, so that Charles Bonaparte could procure the 
proper papers to prove that he was of what is called 
noble birth. For it seems that only the children of 
nobles could enter the French military school at 
Brienne. 

He procured these at last, and also a letter of intro- 
duction to the French queen, Marie Antoinette whose 
sad story you all know so well. 

Then they set out for Autun, and reached that quaint 
old town on the last day of the year 1778. On New 
Year's Day, 1779, Napoleon was entered as a pupil in 
the preparatory school at Autun. 

Autun has been a school town tor hundreds of years. 
The old Druids had a school there, and so did the Ro- 
mans. It is one of the oldest of French towns ; and you 
will find it on your map of France, about one hundred 



AT THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL, 89 

and fifty miles south-east of Paris. It is a picturesque 
old town, placed on a sloping- hillside, that runs down to 
the Arroux River. There is a cathedral in the town 
over nine hundred years old ; and there, too. Napoleon 
found a college and a seminary, a museum and a 
library, with plenty of ruins, walls, and gateways, and 
such thino-s, that told of its oreat ao^e and old-time 
o-randeur. 

It was a fine place in which to go to school, and the 
Bonaparte boys must have found it quite a change from 
their Corsican home. The bishop of Autun, who had 
charge of the cathedral and the schools, was the nephew 
of a friend of Charles Bonaparte, and he promised to 
look after the boys. 

Napoleon did not stay long in the school at Autun. 
His father went to Paris to enter upon his duties as del- 
eg'ate to the Assembly, intending, while there, to make 
arrangements for g-etting Napoleon into the military 
school at Brienne. 

But there was much need of the preparatory work 
at Autun. For you must know that, being a Corsican, 
Napoleon knew scarcely a word of French. The Corsi- 



90 



THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 



cans speak Italian, and this would never do for a French 
schoolboy. So, for three months. Napoleon was drilled 
in French. 

He did not take kindly to It. But he did his best. 
For, you see, his journey from Florence to Marseilles, 
and on to Autun, had opened his eyes. He saw, for 
the first time, cities larger than Ajaccio, and learned 
that there were other places In the world besides 
Corsica. 

But he never really lost his Ajaccio tongue, and 
for most of his life he talked French with an Italian 
accent. 

It was a queer-looking little Italian boy who was 
thus studying French at Autun school You would 
scarcely have looked at him twice ; for his figure was 
small, his appearance insignificant, his face sober and sol- 
emn, his hair stiff and stringy, and his complexion sallow. 
The boys made fun of the way in which he talked, as 
boys are apt to make sport of those who do not talk 
as they do. 

"What Is your name, new boy?" the big boy of 
Autun school called out to Napoleon, as on that first 



AT THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL. 9 1 

day of the new year, which was, as I have said, his 
first day at school, the Bonaparte brothers wandered 
about the schoolyard, strangers and shy. 

" Na-polle-o-nay ! " answered the little new-comer, 
giving the Corsican pronunciation to his name of 
Napoleon. 

" Oho ! so ! " cried the big boy, mimicking him. 
" Na-pailli-au-nez, is it? See, fellows, see! this is Mr. 
Straw- Nose ! " 

For, you see, the way Napoleon pronounced his 
name sounded very much like the French words 
that mean " the nose of straw." That, of course, gave 
the boys at the school a rare chance to nickname ; 
and so poor Napoleon was called " Mr. Straw-Nose" all 
the time he was at that school. 

This was not very long, however; for in three 
months he had made sufficient progress in his study of 
French to permit him to pass into the military school 
at Brienne, into which his father was at last able to 
procure his admission. 

But, while he was at Autun, Napoleon seems to 
have been a favorite with his teachers. One of them, 



92 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

the Abbe Chardon, spoke of him as " a sober, thought- 
ful child." He wished very much to gret into the mili- 
tary school; so he worked hard, learned quickly, and 
was proud of what he called his ability. 

But when the boys tried to plague him, or to twit 
him for being a Corsican, the boy was ready enough 
to talk back. 

The French boys knew but little about Corsica, 
and had a certain contempt for the little island 
which, so they declared, was the home of robbers, 
and which France had one day gone across and 
conquered. 

" Bah, Corsican ! " one of the big boys called out 
to the new scholar, "and what is Corsica? Just an 
island of cowards. Just see how we Frenchmen 
whipped you out of your boots ! " 

Napoleon clinched his little fist, and turned hotly 
on his tormentor. But he was already learning the 
lesson of self-control. 

"And how did you do it. Frenchman?" he re- 
plied. " By numbers. If you had been but four to 
one against us, you would never have conquered us. 



AT THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL. 93 

But, behold ! you were ten to one ! That is too much 
to struggle against." 

"And yet you boast of your general — your 
leader," said the other boy. " You say he is a fine 
commander — this — how do you call him? — this 
Paoli." 

" I say so ; yes, sir," Napoleon replied sadly. 
Then, as if his ambition led him on, he added, " I 
would like to be like him. What could I not do 
then ! " 

This feeling of being a Corsican, an outsicier at 
the school, made the boy quiet and retiring. He 
kept by himself, just as he had at home when 
thines did not suit him ; he walked out alone, and 
played with no one. To be sure, he was more or less 
with his brother Joseph, who loved his ease and com- 
fort, did not fire up when the other boys teased him, 
and smoothed over many a quarrel between them and 
his brother. 

Napoleon would often find fault with Joseph's lack 
of spirit, as he called it ; but Joseph, all through life, 
liked to take things easy, and hated to face trouble. 



94 



THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 



Most of us do, you know ; but it was the readiness of 
Napoleon to boldly face danger, and to attempt what 
appeared to be the impossible, that made him the self- 
reliant boy, the successful man, the conqueror, the 
emperor, the hero. 



THE LONELY SCHOOL-BOY. 95 



CHAPTER NINE. 

THE LONELY SCHOOL-BOY. 

While Napoleon was at Autun school, studying 
French, and preparing for entrance into the military 
academy, his father, Charles Bonaparte, was at Ver- 
sailles, trying to get a little more money from the 
klnof, in return for his services as Corsica's delegate 
to France. 

At the same time he was working to complete the 
arrangements which should permit him to enter Na- 
poleon at the military school, at the expense of the 
state. This he finally accomplished ; and on the 
twenty-third of April, In the year 1779, Napoleon en- 
tered the royal military school at Brienne. 

There were ten of these military schools in France. 
They were started as training-schools for boys who 
were to become officers in the French army. The 
one at Brienne was a bare and ugly-looking lot of 
buildings in the midst of trees and gardens, looking 



g6 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

down toward the little River Aube, and near to the 
fine old chateau, or nobleman's house, built, a hun- 
dred years before Napoleon's day, by the last Count 
of Brienne. 

There were a hundred and fifty boys at Brienne 
school, although there was scarcely room enough for 
a hundred and twenty. 

The new-comer was therefore crowded in with the 
others ; and you may be sure that the old boys did 
not make life pleasant and easy for the new boy. 

Although he had learned to write and speak 
French during his three months' schooling at Autun, 
he could not, of course, speak it very well; so the 
boys plagued him for that. And when he told them 
his name, they, too, made fun of his pronunciation of 
Na-po-le-one, and at once nicknamed him, " straw- 
nose," just as the Autun boys had done. 

Most of the boys who attended Brienne school 
were the sons of French noblemen. They had plenty 
of money to spend ; they made a show of it, and 
dressed and did things as finely as they could. Na- 
poleon, you know, was poor. His father had scrimped 



THE LONELY SCHOOL-BOY. 97 

and beo-o-ed and borrowed to send his boys to school. 
He could not, therefore, give them much for them- 
selves ; so the French boys, with the money to spend 
and the manners to show, made no end of fun of the 
little Corsican, who had neither money nor manners. 

At once he got into trouble. He did not like, 
nor did he understand, the ways of the French boys ; 
he was alone ; he was homesick ; and naturally he be- 
came sulky and uncompanionable. When the boys 
teased him, he tossed back a wrathful answer ; when 
they made fun of his appearance, he grew angry and 
sullen ; and when they tried to force him into their 
society, he went off by himself, and acted like a little 
hermit. 

But when they twitted him on his nationality, 
called him " Straw-nose, the Corsican," and made all 
manner of fun of that rocky and (as they called it) 
savage island, then all the patriotism in the boy's nature 
was aroused, and he called his tormentors French 
cowards, with whom he would one day get square. 

" Bah, Corsican ! and what will you do ? " asked 
Peter Bouquet. 



98 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

" I hope some day to give Corsica her Hberty," 
said Napoleon; "and then all Frenchmen shall march 
into the sea." 

Upon which all the boys laughed loudly ; and Na- 
poleon, walking off in disgust, went into the school- 
building, and there vented his wrath upon a portrait 
of Choiseul, that hung upon the wall. 

"Ah, ha! blackguard, pawnbroker, traitor!" he 
cried, shaking his fist at this portrait of a stout and 
smiling-looking gentleman, "I loathe you! I despise 
you ! I spit upon you ! " And he did. 

Now, Monsieur the Count de Choiseul was the 
French nobleman who was one of the old King 
Louis's ministers and advisers. It was he who had 
planned the conquest of Corsica, and annexed it to 
France. You may not wonder, then, that the little 
Corslcan, homesick for his native island, and hot with 
rage toward those who made fun of it, when he came 
upon this portrait of the man to whom, as he had 
been taught, all Corsica's troubles were due, should 
have vented his wrath upon it, and heaped insults 
upon it. 



THE LONELY SCHOOL-BOY, 



99 



Unfortunately for him, however, the teachers at 
Brienne did not appreciate his patriotic wrath ; so, 




"What! you will not ash Monsieur the Count's pardon?" 

when one of the tattle-tales reported Napoleon's actions, 
at once he was pounced upon, and ordered to ask 



lOO THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

pardon for what he had said and done, standing before 
the portrait of Corsica's enslaver. 

He approached the portrait so reluctantly and con- 
temptuously, that one of the teachers scolded him 
sharply. 

" You are not worthy to be a French officer, 
foolish boy," the teacher declared; "you are no true 
son of France, thus to insult so ereat and noble a 
Frenchman as Monsieur the Count de Choiseul." 

" I am a son of Corsica," Napoleon replied proudly ; 
" that noble country which this man ground in the dust." 

"As well he might," replied the teacher tauntingly. 
" He was Corsica's best friend. He was worth a 
thousand Paoli's." 

" It is not so ! " cried Napoleon, hot with patriotic 
indignation. " You talk like all Frenchmen. Paoli was 
a great man. He loved his country. I admire him. 
I wish to be like him. I can never forgive my father 
for havinof been willinof to desert the cause of Corsica, 
and ao-ree to its union with France. He should have 
followed Paoli's lead, even though it took him with 
Paoli, into exile in England." 



THE LONELY SCHOOL-BOY. lOI 

"Bah! your father!" one of the big boys standing 
by exclaimed; "and who is your father, Straw-nose?" 

Napoleon turned upon his tormentor ; "a better 
man than you, Frenchman ! " he cried ; "a better man 
than this Choiseul here. My father is a Corsican." 

"A stubborn rebel, this boy," said the teacher, now 
losing his temper, " What ! you will not ask Monsieur 
the Count's pardon, as a rebel should? Then will 
we tame your spirit. Is a little arrogant Corsican to 
defy all France, and Brienne school besides ? Go, sir ! 
We will devise some fine punishment for you, that 
shall well repay your insolence and disobedience." 

So Napoleon, in disgrace, left the schoolroom, and 
pacing down his favorite walk, the pleasant avenue 
of chestnut-trees that lined the path from one of the 
schoolhouse doors, he sought his one retreat and her- 
mitage, — his loved and bravely defended garden. 

That garden was a regular Napoleonic Idea. I must 
tell you about it. 



I02 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 



CHAPTER TEN. 

IN napoleon's garden. 

One of the rules of Brienne school was that each 
pupil should know something- about agriculture. To 
illustrate this study, each one of the one hundred and 
fifty boys had a little garden-spot set aside for him to 
cultivate and keep in order. 

Some of the boys did this from choice, and because 
they loved to watch things grow ; but many of them 
were careless, and had no love for fruit or flowers ; so 
Avhile some of the garden-plots were well kept, others 
were neglected. 

Napoleon was glad of this garden-plot, for it gave 
him something which he could call his own. He 
cared for it faithfully ; but he wished to make it even 
more secluded. He remembered his dear grotto at 
Ajaccio, and studied over a plan to make his garden- 
plot just such a real retreat. But it was not large 
enough for this. He looked about him. The boys to 



IN NAPOLEONS GARDEN. IO3 

whom belonged the garden-plots on either side of 
him were careless and neo-lectful. Their o-ardens re- 
ceived no attention ; they were overgrown with weeds ; 
their hedges were full of gaps and holes. 

" I will take them," said Napoleon ; " what one can- 
not care for, another must." 

So the boy went systematically to work to " annex" 
his neighbors' kingdoms, and make from the three plots 
one ample retreat for himself. He cut down the sepa- 
rating borders ; he trimmed and trained and filled in the 
stout outside hedge, until it completely surrounded his 
enlarged domain ; and, in the centre of the paths and 
flower-beds and hedges, he put up a seat and a little 
summer-bower for his pleasure and protection. 

It took some time to get this into shape, of course. 
When he had completed it, and was beginning to en- 
joy it, the owners of the plots he had confiscated awoke 
to a sense of their loss and the excellent garden- spot 
this young Corsican had made for them, " For of 
^course," they said, " the garden-plots are ours. Straw 
Nose has improved them at his own risk. What he 
has made we will keep for our own pleasure." 



I04 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

So they attempted to occupy their property ; but 
with Napoleon there was force in the old saying, 
" Possession is nine points of the law." 

When the dispossessed boys demanded their prop- 
erty, he refused it ; when they spoke of their rights, he 
laughed at them ; and when they attempted to enter 
the garden by force, he fell upon them, drove them 
flying from the field, and pommelled them so soundly 
that they judged discretion to be the better part of 
valor, and made no further attempt to disturb the 
conqueror. 

The other boys did attempt it, however, simply to 
tease and annoy the fiery Corsican. But it always re- 
sulted in their own damage ; for Napoleon become so 
attached to his garden citadel, that he would o-row fu- 
riously angry whenever he was disturbed. Rushing out, 
he would rout his assailants completely ; until at last it 
was understood that it was safest to let him alone. 

As he sought his garden on this day of disgrace to 
which I have referred, he was full of bitter thoughts 
against the unfriendly boys and the unsympathetic 
teachers amid whom his lot was cast. 



IN NAPOLEONS GARDEN. IO5 

Like most boys, he determined to do something that 
should free him from this tyranny; then, hke many boys, 
he decided to run away. Where or how he could go he 
did not know; for he had no friends in France who would 
help him along, and he had no money in his pocket to 
enable him to help himself. 

" I will run away to sea," he said. For the sea, you 
know, is the first thought of boys who determine to be 
runaways. 

But Napoleon had a strong love for his family ; he 
held high notions in regard to the honor of the family 
name ; above all else, he was determined to do some- 
thing that should help his family out of its sore straits, 
and become one element of its support. 

" If I should run away to sea," he thought, " I should 
bring discredit and shame to my family ; I should annoy 
my father, and seriously interfere with my own plans. 
For, should I run away from Brienne, my father, who has 
been at such pains to place me here, would be distressed, 
and perhaps injured. No ; I will brave it out. But I 
will write to my father, asking him to take me away, and 
place me in some school where I shall feel less like an 



io6 



THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 



outcast, where poverty would not be held as a crime, 
and where I shall have more agreeable surroundings. 

So he went into his o-arden fortress ; he stretched 
himself at full lenorth on his bench, and, using the cover 




Napoleon writing to his father. 

of his favorite book, Plutarch's " Lives," as a desk, he 
wrote this letter to his father : — 

My Father, — If you or my protectors cannot give me the means 
of sustaining myself more honorably in the house where I am, please 
summon me home, and as soon as possible. I am tired of poverty, 
and of the smiles of the insolent scholars who are superior to me 
only in their fortune ; for there is not one among them who feels one- 
hundredth part of the noble sentiments by which I am animated. 



IN NAPOLEON S GARDEN. IO7 

Must your son, sir, continually be the butt of these boobies, who, 
vain of the luxuries which they enjoy, insult me with their laughter 
at the privations I am forced to endure ? No, father ; No ! If 
fortune refuses to smile upon me, take me from Brienne, and make 
me, if you will, a mechanic. From these words you may judge of my 
despair. This letter, sir, please believe, is not dictated by a vain 
desire to enjoy expensive amusements. I have no such wish. I feel 
simply that it is necessary to show my companions that I can procure 
them as well as they, if I wish to do so. 

Your respectful and affectionate son, 

Bonaparte." 

It took some time to write this letter ; for, with 
Napoleon, letter- writing was always a detested task. 

When he had written and directed it, he felt better. 
We always do feel relieved, you know, if we speak out 
or write down our feelings. Then he read a chapter in 
Plutarch about Alexander the Great. This set him to 
thinking and planning how he would win a battle if he 
should ever become a leader and commander. He had 
a notion that he knew just what he would do ; and, to 
prove that his plan was good, he threw himself on the 
garden walk, and gathering a lot of pebbles, he began 
to set them in array, as if they were soldiers, and to 
make all the moves and marches and counter-marches 



I08 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

of a furious battle. He indicated tlie generals and 
chief officers in this army of stone by the larger pebbles ; 
and you may be sure that the largest pebble of all 
represented the commander-in-chief — and that was 
Napoleon himself. 

As he marshalled his pebble army, under the lead 
of his generals and officers, shifting some, advancing 
others, rearranging certain of them in squares, and mass- 
ing others as if to resist an attack, Napoleon was 
conscious of a snickering sort of laugh from somewhere 
above him. 

He looked up, and caught sight of a mocking face 
looking down at him from the top of the hedge that 
bordered his garden. 

"Ho, ho ! Straw- nose ! " the spy cried out ; " and 
what is the baby doing? Is it playing with the 
pretty pebbles ? Is it making mud-pies ? It was a 
sweet child, so it was ! " 

Napoleon flushed with anger, enraged both at the 
intrusion and the teasing. 

" Pig ! imbecile ! " he cried ; " get down from my 
hedge, or I will make you ! " 




'Get down from imj hedge ! ' cried Napoleon. 



IN NAPOLEON S GARDEN. I I I 

" Ho ! hear the infant ! " came back the taunt- 
ing answer. "He will make me — this pretty Corsi- 
can baby who plays with pebbles. He will make me ! 
That is g-ood ! I laugh ; I — Oh, help ! help ! the 
Corsican has killed me ! " 

For a moment Napoleon thought indeed he had ; 
for a moment, too, I am afraid, he did not care. For 
so enraged was he at the boy's insults and actions, 
that he had caught up his biggest pebble, which 
happened to be Napoleon the general, and flung it 
at the intruder. It struck him squarely between the 
eyes, and so stunned him that he fell back from the 
hedge, and lay, first howling, and then terribly quiet. 
In the space outside Napoleon's garden. At once 
there was a hue and cry ; Napoleon was summoned 
from his retreat, and drao-o-ed before his teacher. 

" Ah, miserable one ! " cried the master. " And 
is it you again ? You have perhaps killed your fel- 
low-student. You will yet end in the Bastille, or on 
the block. Take him away, until we see what shall 
be the result of the last ill-doing of this wicked 
one. 



112 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

" When one plays the spy and the bully one must 
expect retribution," said Napoleon loftily. "This Bou- 
quet is a rascal who will be more likely to end in the 
Bastille than I, who did but defend my own." 

This language, of course, did not help matters ; so 
into the school-cage, or punishment " lock-up " for 
the school-boy offenders, young Napoleon was at once 
hurried, without an opportunity for explanation or 
protest. 



FRIENDS AND FOES. 1 1 



CHAPTER ELEVEN. 

FRIENDS AND FOES. 

Napoleon, the prisoner in the school " lock-up," 
raged for a while like a caged lion. Then he calmed 
down into the sulks, returned to his determination to 
run away, concluded again that he would go to sea, 
thought of his family and his duties once more, and 
at last concluded to take his punishment without a 
word, though he knew that the boy who had mocked 
him into anger deserved the punishment fully as much 
as did he who had been the insulted one. 

" But then," he reasoned, " he paid well for his 
taunts and teasing. I wonder how he is now ? " 

Tiis schoolmate, the English boy, Lawley, was on 
duty outside the "lock-up" door, as a sort of monitor. 

" Say, you Lawley ! " Napoleon called out, " and 
how is that brute of a Bouquet ? " 

" None the better for seeing you, little one," re- 
plied the good-natured English boy, who had that love 



114 '^^^ ^^^ LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

of fair play that is supposed to belong to all English- 
men, and, therefore, felt that young Bonaparte was 
suffering unjustly. Then he added : 

" Bouquet will no doubt die, and then what will 
you do ? " 

" I will plead self-defence, my friend," said Na- 
poleon. " Did not you tell me that an English judge 
did once declare that a man's home was his castle, 
which he was pledged to defend from invasion and 
assault. What else is my garden ? That brute of a 
Bouquet came spying about my castle, and I did but 
defend myself. Is it not so?" 

"It may be so to you, young Bonaparte," Lawley 
replied; "but not to your judges. No, little one, 
you're in for it now ; they'll make you smart for this, 
whatever happens to old Bouquet." 

For, like all English boys, this young Lawley mingled 
with his love of justice an equal love for teasing; and 
like most of the boys at Brienne school, he declared 
it to be " great fun to get the little Corsican mad." 

"Then must you help me to get away from here," 
Napoleon declared. " Look you, Lawley!" and the boy 



FRIENDS AND FOES. ' II5 

in great secrecy pulled a paper from his pocket; "see 
now what I have written." 

The English boy took the paper, ran his eye over 
it, and laughed as loudly as he dared while on duty. 

" My eye ! " he said, " it's in English, and pretty fair 
English too. A letter to the British Admiralty ? Per- 
mission to enter the British navy as a midshipman, 
eh ? Well, you Bonaparte, you are a cool one. A 
Frenchman in the British navy ! Fancy now ! " 

"No, sir; a Corsican," replied Napoleon. "Why 
should it not be so ? What have I received but scorn 
and insult from these Frenchmen ? You English are 
more fair, and England is the friend of Corsica. Why 
should I not become a midshipman in your navy ? 
The only difficulty, I am afraid, will be my religion." 

" Your religion! " cried Lawley, with a laugh ; "why, 
you young rascal ! I don't believe you have any reli- 
gion at all." 

" But my family have," Napoleon protested. " My 
mother's race, the Ramolini " (and the boy rolled out 
the name as if that respectable farmer family were 
dukes or emperors at least), "are very strict. I should 



Il6 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

be disinherited if I sliowed any signs of becoming- a 
heretic Hke you EngHsh ; and if I joined the British 
navy, would I not be compelled to become a heretic, 
like you, Lawley ? " 

Lawley burst into such a loud laugh over the boy's 
religious scruples, of which he had never before seen 
evidence, that he aroused one of the teachers with his 
noise, and had to scud away, for fear of being caught, 
and punished for neglect of duty. 

But he kept Napoleon's letter of application. He 
must have sent it, either in fun, or with some desire 
to befriend this badgered Corsican boy ; for to-day 
Napoleon's letter still exists in the crowded English 
department, wherein are filed the archives of the Brit- 
ish Admiralty. 

At last, by the interest of certain of the friends 
whom the boy's misfortune, if not his pluck, had made 
for him — such lads as Lawley, the English boy, Bour- 
rienne, Lauriston, and Father Patrault, the teacher of 
mathematics, — Napoleon was liberated with a reprimand; 
while the boy who had caused all the trouble went 
unpunished, save for the headache that Napoleon's 



FRIENDS AND FOES. II7 

well-aimed stone had given him and the scar the blow 
had left. 

But the boy could not long stay out of trouble. 
The next time it came about, friendship, and not vin- 
dictiveness, was the cause. 

Napoleon did not forget the good offices of his 
friends. Indeed, Napoleon never forgot a benefit. 
His final fall from his great power came, largely, 
because of the very men whom he had honored and 
enriched, out of friendship or appreciation for services 
performed in his behalf. 

One day young Lauriston, who was on duty as a 
sort of sentry in the chestnut avenue that was one of 
Napoleon's favorite walks, left his post, and joining 
Napoleon, begged him to help him in a problem in 
mathematics which he had been too lazy or too stupid 
to solve. 

" We will go to your garden. Straw-nose," said 
Lauriston ; for both friend and foe, after the manner 
of boys, used the nicknames that had by common 
consent been fastened upon their schoolfellows. 

"We will not, then," Napoleon returned. For, as 



Il8 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

you know, his garden was sacred, and not even his 
friends were allowed entrance. " See, we will go be- 
yond, to the seat under the big chestnut. But are 
you not on duty here ? " 

Lauriston snapped his fingers and shrugged his 
shoulders in contempt of duty. "That for duty!" he 
exclaimed. " My duty now is to get out this pig of a 
problem." 

Under the big chestnut, which was another of Na- 
poleon's favorite resorts, the two boys put their heads 
together over Lauriston's problem, and it was soon made 
clear to the lad ; for Napoleon was always good at 
mathematics. 

But the time spent over the problem exhausted 
Lauriston's limit of duty ; and when the teacher came 
to relieve him at his post, the boy was nowhere to be 
seen. 

Now, at Brienne, military instruction was on mili- 
tary rules ; and no crime against military discipline is 
much greater than " absence without leave." 

So when, at last, young Lauriston was found in 
Napoleon's company, away from his post of duty, and 



FRIENDS AND FOES. II9 

beneath the big chestnut-tree, the boy was In a "pretty 
mess." But Napoleon never deserted his friends. 

" Sir," he said to the teacher, " the fault is mine. 
I led young Lauriston away to" — he stopped: it 
would scarcely help his friend's cause to say that he 
had been helping him at his lessons ; thus he con- 
tinued, "to show him my lists" — which was not an 
untruth, for he had shown the copy to Lauriston. 

"Your lists, unruly one," said the teacher — one 
of Napoleon's chief persecutors. " And what lists, 
pray ? " 

"My lists of the possessions of England, here in my 
copy-book," said Napoleon, drawing the badly scrawled 
blank-book from his pocket. 

He handed it to the teacher. 

"Ah, what handwriting ! It is vilely done, young 
Bonaparte. Even I can scarcely read it," he said. 
" What is this ? You would draw my portrait in your 
copy-book ? Wretched one ! have you no manners ? 
So ! Possessions of the English, is it ? Would that 
the English possessed you! None then would be 
happier than I." 



I20 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

Thereupon the teacher read through the list, making 
sarcastic comments on each entry, until he came to the 
end. " ' Cabo Corso in Guinea, a pretty strong fort 
on the sea side of Fort Royal, a defence of sixteen 
cannons.' Bad spelling, worse writing, this ! and the 
last, ' Saint Helena, a little island ; ' and where miofht 
it be, that Saint Helena, young Bonaparte?" 

" In the South Atlantic, well off the African coast," 
replied Napoleon. 

"Would you were there too, young malcontent!" 
said the teacher, " luring boys from their duty. This is 
worse than treason. See ! you shall to the lockup 
once more. And you are no longer battalion captain." 

Young Lauriston would have protested against 
this injustice, and declared that he was at fault ; but, 
like too many boys under similar circumstances , he 
was afraid, and accepted anything that should save him 
from punishment. Moreover, a glance at Napoleon's 
masterful eyes held his tongue mute, and he saw his 
friend borne away to the punishment that should have 
been his. 

" 'Tis Saint Helena's fault, and not yours, my Lau- 



FRIENDS AND FOES. 12 1 

riston," Napoleon whispered in his ear. " Bad writing 
is never forgiven." 

So, as if in a prophecy of the future, Napoleon 
3uffered unjust disgrace in connection with Saint Hele- 
na's name ; and to-day, in the splendid exhibition-room 
of the historical library at Florence, jealously guarded 
beneath a glass case, is Napoleon's blue paper copy- 
book, the very last line of which reads, by the stran- 
gest of all strange coincidences, " Saint Helena, a little 
island." 

The boy's willingness to suffer for his friends, and, 
even more than this, the unjust taking away of his 
office in the school battalion, of which he was quite 
proud, turned the tide in young Napoleon's favor, so 
far as his schoolmates were concerned. 

" Little Straw-nose is a plucky one, is he not, 
though ? " the boys declared ; and when he came on the 
field again, they welcomed him with cheers, and made 
him leader for the day in their sports. 

They had great fun. Napoleon, full of his read- 
ings in Plutarch's " Lives," divided the boys into two 
camps ; one camp was to be the Persians, the other the 



122 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

Greeks and Macedonians. Napoleon, of course, was 
Alexander ; and, like the great Macedonian, he wrought 
such havoc on the Persians, that the school hall in 
which the battle was waged was filled with the uproar, 
and all the teachers at Brienne rushed pell-mell to 
the place, to quell what they were certain must be a 
school riot, led on by " that miserable Corsican." 

Day by day, however, " that miserable Corsican " 
made more and more friends among his schoolfellows. 
For boys grow tired at last of plaguing one who has 
both spirit and pluck ; and these Napoleon certainly 
possessed. He had come to the school " a little sav- 
age," so the polished French boys declared. 

" I was in Brienne," he said years afterwards, as 
he thought over his school-days, " the poorest of all 
my schoolfellows. They always had money in their 
pockets; I, never. I was proud, and was most careful 
•that nobody should perceive this. I could neither 
laugh nor amuse myself like the others. I was not 
■one of them. I could not be popular." 

So he had to go through the same' hard training 
-that other poor boys at boarding-school have under- 



1'' 



FRIENDS AND FOES. 1 25 

gone. He, howev^er, was petulant, high-spirited, proud, 
and had something of that Corsican love of retaliation 
that has made that rocky island famous for its feuds 
and family rows, or " vendettas " as they are called. 

He showed the boys at last that they could not 
impose upon him ; that he had plenty of spirit ; that 
he was kind-hearted to those who showed themselves 
friendly ; and, above all, that he was fitted to lead them 
in their sports, and could, in fact, help them toward 
having a jolly good time. 

So, gradually, they began to side with and follow 
him. They left him in undisturbed possession of his 
fortified garden, they asked his help over hard points 
in mathematics, until at last he beean even to o-row 
a little popular. And then, to crown all, came the 
ofreat Snow-ball Fioht. 



126 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 



CHAPTER TWELVE. 

THE GREAT SNOW-BALL FIGHT AT BRIENNE SCHOOL. 

That Snow-ball Fio;"ht is now famous. It was in 
the winter of 1783. Snow fell heavily; drifts piled 
up in the schoolyard at Brienne. The schoolboys 
marvelled and exclaimed; for such a snow-fall was 
rare in France. Then they began to shiver and grum- 
ble. They shivered at the cold, to which they were 
not accustomed ; they grumbled at the snow which, 
by covering their playground, kept them from their 
usual out-of-door sports, and held them for a time 
prisoners within the dark schoolrooms. 

Suddenly Napoleon had an inspiration. 

" What is snow for, my brothers," he exclaimed, 
" if not to be used ? Let us use it. What say you 
to a snow fort and a siege ? Who will join me ? 

It was a novel idea; and, with all the boyish love 
for something new and exciting, the boys of Brienne 
entered into the plan at once. 



THE GREAT SNOW-BALL FIGHT AT BRIENNE. I 27 

" The fort, the fort, young Straw-nose ! " they cried. 
" Show us what to do ! Let us build it at once ! " 

With Napoleon as director, they straightway set to 
work. The boy had an excellent head for such things ; 
and his mathematical knowledge, together with the 
preparatory study in fortifications he had already pur- 
sued in the school, did him good service. 

He was not satisfied with simply piling up mounds 
of snow. He built regular works on a scientific plan. 
The snow " packed well," and the boys worked like 
beavers. With spades and brooms and hands and home- 
made wooden shovels, they built under Napoleon's 
directions a snow fort that set all Brienne wondering- 
and admirincr. There were intrenchments and re- 
doubts, bastions and ramparts, and all the parts and 
divisions and defences that make up a real fort. 

It took some days to build this wonderful fort. 
For the boys could only work in their hours of recess. 
But at last, when all was ready. Napoleon divided the 
schoolboys into two unequal portions. The smaller 
number was to hold the fort as defenders ; the larger 
number was to form the besieo^ino- force. 



125 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

At the head of the besiegers was Napoleon. Who 
was captain of the fort I do not know. His name has 
not come down to us. 

But the story of the Snow-ball Fight has. For 
days the battle raged. At every recess hour the 
forces gathered for the exciting sport. The rule was 
that when once the fort was captured, the besiegers 
were to become its possessors, and were, in turn, to 
defend it from its late occupants, who were now the 
attacking army, increased to the required number by 
certain of the less skilful fio-hters in the successful 
army. 

Napoleon was in his element. He was an impet- 
uous leader ; but he was skilful too ; he never lost his 
head. 

Again and again, as leader of the storming-party, 
he would direct the attack ; and at just the right 
moment, in the face of a shower of snow-balls, he 
would dash from his post of observation, head the as- 
saulting army, and scaling the walls with the fire of 
victory in his eye and the shout of encouragement on 
his lips, would lead his soldiers over the ramparts, and 




'As leader of the storming -party he would direct the attack. 



THE GREAT SNOW-BALL FIGHT AT BRIENNE. I3I 

with a last dash drive the defeated defenders out from 
the fortification. 

The snow held for nearly ten days ; the fight kept 
up as long as the snow walls, often repaired and 
strengthened , would hold toQ^ether. 

The thaw, that relentless enemy of all snow sports, 
came to the attack at last, and gradually dismantled 
the fortifications ; snow for ammunition o-rew thin and 
poor, and gravel became more and more a part of the 
snow-ball manufacture. 

Napoleon tried to prevent this, for he knew the 
danger from such missiles. But often, in the heat of 
battle, his commands were disregarded. One boy 
especially — the same Bouquet who had scaled his 
hedge and brought him into trouble — was careless or 
vindictive in this matter. 

On the last day of the snow. Napoleon saw young 
Bouquet packing snow-balls with dirt and gravel, and 
commanded him to stop. But Bouquet only flung out 
a hot " I won't ! " at the commander, and launched his 
gravel snow-ball against the decaying fort. 

Napoleon was just about to head the grand assault. 



132 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

"To the rear with you ! to the rear, Bouquet! You 
are disquahfied ! " he cried. 

But Bouquet was insubordinate. He did not intend 
to be cheated out of his fun by any orders that " Straw- 
nose " should give him. Instead of obeying his com- 
mander, he sang out a contemptuous refusal, and dashed 
ahead, as if to supplant his general in the post of 
leader of the assault. 

Napoleon had no patience with disobedience. The 
insubordination and insolence of Bouquet angered him ; 
and dartine forward, he collared his rebellious subor- 
dinate, and flung him backward down the slushy ram- 
part. 

" Imbecile ! " he cried. " Learn to obey! Drag him 
to the rear, Lauriston." 

The fort was carried. But "General Thaw" was 
too strong for the young soldiers ; and that night, a rain 
setting in, finished the destruction of the now historic 
snow-fort of Brienne School. 

Bouquet, smarting under what he considered the 
disgrace that had been put upon him before his play- 
mates, accosted Napoleon that night in the hall. 



THE GREAT SNOW-BALL FIGHT AT BRIENNE. 1 33 

"Bah, then, smarty Straw-nose!" he cried; "you 
are a beast. How dare you lay hands on me, a French- 
man r 

" Because you would not obey orders," Napoleon 
replied. "Was not I in command?" 

" You ! " sneered Bouquet ; " and who are you to 
command ? A runaway Corsican, a brigand, and the 
son of a brigand, like all Corsicans." 

" My father is not a brigand," returned Napoleon. 
"He is a gentleman — which you are not." 

"I am no gentleman, say you?" cried the enraged 
French boy. " Why, young Straw-nose, my ancestors 
were gentlemen under great King Louis when yours 
were tending sheep on your Corsican hills. My father 
is an officer of France ; yours is " — 

" Well, sir, and what is mine ? " said Napoleon 
defiantly. 

" Yours," Bouquet laughed with a mocking and 
cruel sneer, "yours is but a lackey, a beggar in livery, 
a miserable tip-staff'" 

Napoleon fiung himself at the insulter of his father 
in a fury ; but he was caught back by those standing 



134 '^^^ ^^^ LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

by, and saved from the disgrace of again breaking the 
rules by fighting in the school-hall. 

All night, however, he brooded over Bouquet's taunt- 
ing words, and the desire for revenge grew hot within 
him. 

The boy had said his father was no gentleman. 
No gentleman, indeed ! Bouquet should see that he 
knew how gentlemen should act. He would not fall 
upon him, and beat him as he deserved. He would 
conduct himself as all gentlemen did. He would chal- 
lenge to a duel the insulter of his father. 

This was the custom. The refuge of all gentlemen 
who felt themselves insulted, disgraced, or persecuted 
in those days, was to seek vengeance in a personal 
encounter with deadly weapons, called a duel. It is a 
foolish and savage way of seeking redress ; but even to- 
day it is resorted to by those who feel themselves ill 
treated by their " equals." So Napoleon felt that he was 
doing the only wise and gentlemanly thing possible. 

But, even then duelling was against the law. It 
was punished when men were caught at it ; for school- 
boys, it was considered an unheard-of crime. 



THE GREAT SNOW-BALL FIGHT AT BRIENNE. 1 35 

Still, though against the law, all men felt that it 
was the only way to salve their wounded honor. Na- 
poleon felt it would be the 
only manly course open to 
him ; so, early next morn- 
ing, he despatched his friend 




Napoleon sends his Challenge. 



Bourrienne with a note to Bouquet. That note was 
a " cartel," or challenge. It demanded that Mr. Bou- 



136 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

quet should meet Mr. Bonaparte at such time and 
place as their seconds might select, there to fight with 
swords until the insult that Mr. Bouquet had put upon 
Mr. Bonaparte should be wiped out in blood. 

There was ferocity for you ! But it was the 
fashion. 

" Mr. Bouquet," however, had no desire to meet 
the fiery young Corsican at swords' points. So, in- 
stead of meeting his adversary, he sneaked off to one 
of* the teachers, who, as we know, most disliked Na- 
poleon, and complained that the Corsican, Bonaparte, 
was seeking his life, and meant to kill him. 

At once Napoleon was summoned before the in- 
diofnant instructor. 

"So, sir!" cried the teacher, "is this the way you 
seek to become a gentleman and officer of your king? 
You would murder a schoolmate ; you would force 
him to a duel ! No denial, sir ; no explanation. Is 
this so, or not so ? " 

Once more Napoleon saw that words or remon- 
strances would be in vain. 

" It is so," he replied. 



THE GREAT SNOW-BALL FIGHT AT BRIENNE. I37 

" Can we, then, never work out your Corsican bru- 
tality ? " said the teacher. "Go, sir! you are to be im- 
prisoned until fitting sentence for your crime can be 
considered." 

And once again poor Napoleon went into the 
school lock-up, while Bouquet, who was the most at 
fault, went free. 

There was almost a rebellion in school over the 
imprisonment of the successful general who had so 
bravely fought the battles of the snow-fort. 

Napoleon passed a day in the lock-up ; then he 
was again summoned before the teacher who had thus 
punished him. 

" You are an incorrigible, young Bonaparte," said 
the teacher. " Imprisonment can never cure you. 
Through it, too, you go free from your studies and 
tasks. I have considered the proper punishment. It 
is this : you are to put on to-day the penitent's wool- 
len gown ; you are to kneel during dinner-time at the 
door of the dining-room, where all may see your dis- 
grace and take warning therefrom ; you are to eat 
your dinner on your knees. Thereafter, in presence 



138 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

of your schoolmates assembled in the dining-room, 
you are to apologize to Mr. Bouquet, and ask pardon 
from me, as representing the school, for thus break- 
ing the laws and acting as a bully and a murderer. 
Go, sir, to your room, and assume the penitent's 
o-own." 

Napoleon, as I have told you, was a high-spirited 
boy, and keenly felt disgrace. This sentence was as hu- 
miliating and mortifying as anything that could be put 
upon him. Rebel at it as he might, he knew that he 
would be forced to do it ; and, distressed beyond meas- 
ure at thought of what he must go through, he sought 
his room, and flung himself on his bed in an agony 
of tears. He actually had what in these days we 
call a fit of hysterics. 

While thus " broken up," his room door opened. 
Supposing that the teacher, or one of the monitors, 
had come to prepare him for the dreadful sentence, 
he refused to move. 

Then a voice, that certainly was not the one he 
expected, called to him. He raised a flushed and tear- 
ful face from the bed, and met the inquiring eyes of 



THE GREAT SNOW-BALL FIGHT AT BRIENNE. 1 39 

his father's old friend, and the "protector" of the 
Bonaparte family, General Marbeuf, formerly the 
French commander in Corsica. 

"Why, Napoleon, boy! what does all this mean?" 
inquired the general. "Have you been in mischief? 
What is the trouble ? " 

The visit came as a climax to a most exciting event. 
In it Napoleon saw escape from the disgrace he so 
feared, and the injustice against which he so rebelled. 
With a joyful shout he flung himself impulsively at his 
friend's feet, clasped his knees, and begged for his 
protection. The boy, you see, was still unnerved and 
over-wrought, and was not as cool or self-possessed as 
usual. 

Gradually, however, he calmed down, and told Gen- 
eral Marbeuf the whole story. 

The general was indignant at the sentence. But 
he laughed heartily at the idea of this fourteen -year- 
old boy challenging another to a duel. 

"Why, what a fire-eater it is!" he cried. "But 
you had provocation, boy. This Bouquet is a sneak, 
and your teacher is a tyrant. But we will change it 



140 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

all ; see, now ! I will seek out the principal. I will 
explain it all. He shall see it rightly, and you shall 
not be thus disgraced. No, sir! not if I, General Mar- 
beuf, intrench myself alone with you behind what is 
left of your slushy snow-fort yonder, and fight all Bri- 
enne school in your behalf — teachers and all. So 
cheer up, lad ! we will make it right." 



RECOMMENDED FOR PROMOTION. I4I 



CHAPTER THIRTEEN. 

RECOMMENDED FOR PROMOTION. 

General Marbeuf did make it all right. Bouquet 
was called to account ; the teacher who had so often 
made it unpleasant for Napoleon was sharply repri- 
manded; and the principal, having- his attention drawn 
to the persistent persecution of this boy from Corsica, 
consented to his release from imprisonment, while 
sternly lecturing him on the sin of duelling. 

The general also chimed in with the principal's lec- 
ture ; although I am afraid, being a soldier, he was more 
in sympathy with Napoleon than he should have been. 

" A bad business this duelling, my son," he said, 
"a bad business — though I must say this rascal Bou- 
quet deserved a good beating for his insolence. But 
a beating is hardly the thing between gentlemen." 

"And you have fought a duel, my General?" 
inquired Napoleon. 



142 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

" Have I? why, scores!" the bluff soldier admitted. 




••'And you haue fought a duel, my General?' inquired Napoleon." 

"Let me see — I have fought one — two — four — 
why, when I was scarcely more than your age, my 



RECOMMENDED FOR PROMOTION. 1 43 

friend, I" — and then the general suddenly stopped. 
For he saw how his reminiscences would grow into 
admissions that would scarcely be a correction. 

So, with a hem and a haw, General Marbeuf 
wisely changed the subject, and began to inquire 
into the reasons for Napoleon's unpleasant experiences 
at Brienne. He speedily discovered that the cause 
lay in the pocket. As you have already learned from 
Napoleon's letter to his father and his own later re- 
flections, the boy's poverty made him dissatisfied with 
his lot, while his companions, heedless and blunder- 
ing as boys are apt to be in such matters, did not 
try to smooth over the difference between their plenty 
and this boy's need, but rather increased his bitter- 
ness by their thoughtless speech and action. 

" Brains do not lie in the pocket, Napoleon, boy," 
he said. " You have as much Intelligence as any of 
your fellows ; you should not be so touchy because 
you do not happen to have their spending-money. 
You must learn to be more charitable. Do not take 
offence so easily ; remember that all boys admire abil- 
ity, and look kindly on good-fellowship in a com- 



144 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

rade, whether he have much or Httle in his purse. 
Learn to be more companionable ; accept things as 
they come ; and if you are ever hard pushed for 
money, — call on me. I'll see you through. " 

Any boy will take a lecture with so agreeable an 
ending, and Napoleon did not resent his good friend's 
advice. 

The general also introduced the boy to the great 
lady who lived in the big chateau near by — the Lady 
of Brienne. She interested herself in the lad's doings, 
gave him many a "tip," invited him to her home, and, 
by kindly words and motherly deeds, brought the boy 
out of his nervousness and solitude into somethinp- 
more like good manners and gentlemanly ways. 

So the school-life at Brienne went on more aeree- 
ably as the months passed by. Napoleon studied 
hard. He made good progress in mathematics and 
history, though he disliked the languages, and never 
wrote a good hand. He was always an "old boy" for 
his years ; and, in time, many of his teachers became 
interested in him, and even Qfrew fond of him. 

But he always kept his family in mind. He was 



RECOMMENDED FOR PROMOTION, 1 45 

continually planning- how he might help his mother, 
and orive his brothers and sisters a chance to o-et 
an education. 

He even treated Joseph as if he himself were the 
elder, and Joseph the younger brother. There is a 
letter in existence which he wrote to his father in 
1783, in which he tries to arrang"e for Joseph's future, 
as that rather heavy boy had decided not to become 
a priest. 

" Joseph," so Napoleon wrote from Brienne to his 
father, " can come here to school. The principal says 
he can be received here ; and Father Patrault, the 
teacher of mathematics, says he will be glad to under- 
take Joseph's instruction, and that, if he will work, 
we may both of us go together for our artillery ex- 
amination. Never mind me. I can eet alone- But 
you must do something for Joseph. Good by, my 
dear father. I hope you will decide to send Joseph 
here to Brienne, rather than to Metz. It will be a 
pleasure for us to be together ; and, as Joseph knows 
nothing of mathematics, if you send him to Metz, he 
will have to beo^in with the little children ; and that, I 



146 THE BOY 1.IFE OF NAPOLEON. 

know, will disgust him. I hope, therefore, that before 
the end of October I shall embrace Joseph." 

That is a nice, brotherly letter, is it not ? It does 
not sound like the boy who was always ready to quarrel 
and fight with brother Joseph, nor does it seem to be 
from a sulky, disagreeable boy. This spirit of looking 
out for his family was one of the traits of Napoleon's 
character that was noticeable alike in the boy, the 
soldier, the commander, and the emperor. 

Indeed, the very spirit of self-denial in which this 
letter, an extract from which you have just read, was 
written, was not only characteristic of this remarkable 
man of whose boy-life this story tells, but it led in his 
school-days at Brienne to a change that affected his 
whole life. 

One day there came to the school the Chevalier de 
Keralio, inspector of military schools — a sort of com- 
mittee-man as you would say in America. It was 
the duty of the inspector to look into the record, and 
arrange for the promotions, of " the king's wards," as 
the boys and girls were called who were educated at 
the expense of the state. 



RECOMMENDED FOR PROMOTION. 1 47 

He was, in some way, attracted to this sober, silent, 
and sad-eyed little Corsican, and inquired into his his- 
tory. He rather liked the boy's appearance, odd as it 
was. He took quite a fancy to the )Oung" Napoleon, 
talked with him, questioned him, and outlined to the 
teachers at Brienne what he thought should be the 
future course of the lad. 

Charles Bonaparte had some thought of placing- Na- 
poleon in the naval service of France. The boy told 
Inspector Keralio this ; but the chevalier declared that 
he intended to recommend the boy for promotion to 
the military school at Paris, and then have him as- 
signed for service at Toulon. This was the nearest 
port to Corsica, and would place Napoleon nearer to 
his much-loved family home. 

The teachers objected to this. 

"There are other boys in the school much better 
fitted for such an honor than this young Bonaparte," 
they said. 

But the inspector thought otherwise. 

" I know boys," he said. " I know what I am doing." 

" But he is not ready yet," said the principal. " To 



148 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

do as you advise would be to change all the rules set 
down for promotion." 

" Well, what if it does ? " replied the inspector. 

" But why should you favor this boy and his family? 
They are Corsicans." 

"I do not care anything about his family," the in- 
spector declared, " If I put aside the rules in this 
case, it is not to do the Bonaparte family a favor. I 
do not know them. But I have studied this boy. It 
is because of him that I propose this action. I see a 
spark in him that cannot be too early cultivated. It 
shall not be extinguished if I can help it. This 
young Bonaparte will make his mark if he has a 
chance, and I shall give him that chance." 

So before he left Brienne the inspector wrote this 
strong recommendation of the boy whom he desired 
to befriend and put forward : — 

"Monsieur de Bonaparte (Napoleon), born August 15, 1769. 
Height, four feet, ten inclies. Of good constitution, excellent health, 
mild disposition. Has finished the fourth form ; is straightforward 
and obliging. His conduct has been most satisfactory. He has been 
distinguished for his application to mathematics ; is fairly acquainted 
with history and geography ; is weak in all accomplishments, — 



RECOMMENDED FOR PROMOTION. 1 49 

drawing, dancing, music, and tlie like. This boy would make an 
excellent sailor. He deserves promotion to the school in Paris." 

Napoleon had gained a powerful friend. His favor 
would put the boy well forward in his career. He 
felt quite elated. But, unfortunately for the plans pro- 
posed, the Inspector de Keralio died suddenly, before 
his recommendation could he acted upon ; and with so 
many other applications that were backed up by in- 
fluence, for boys with better opportunities, Napoleon's 
desired assignment to the naval service did not re- 
ceive action by the government, and he was passed 
by in favor of less able but better-befriended boys. 

So, w^hen the examination-days came, the new In- 
spector, who came in place of the lad's friend Chevalier 
de Keralio, decided that young Napoleon Bonaparte 
was fitted for the artillery service; and at the age of 
fifteen the boy left the school at Brienne, and was 
ordered to enter upon a higher course of study at 
the military school at Paris. Nothing more was said 
about preparing him for the naval service, for which 
Inspector de Keralio had recommended him. And 
in the certificate which he carried from Brienne to 



150 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

Paris, Napoleon was described as a "masterful, impet- 
uous and headstrong boy." Evidently the opinion of 
Napoleon's teachers was adopted, rather than the pro- 
phetic report of his dead friend. Inspector de Keralio. 

In after-years Napoleon forgot all the worries and 
troubles of his school-days at Brienne, and remem- 
bered only the pleasant times there. 

Once, when he was a man, he heard some bells 
chiming musically. He stopped, listened, and said to 
his old schoolmate, whom he had made his secretary, — 

"Ah, Bourrienne ! that reminds me of my first years 
at Brienne ; we were happy there, were we not ? " 

To the chaplain who had prepared him for that 
most important occasion in the lives of all French 
children, his first communion, and who had taken a 
fatherly interest in him, Napoleon, when powerful and 
great, wrote : "I can never forget that to your virtu- 
ous example and wise lessons I am indebted for the 
CTreat fortune that has come to me. Without relio-ion, 
no happiness, no future, is possible. My dear friend, 
remember me in your prayers." 

Even his old adversary. Bouquet, whose mean ways 



RECOMMENDED FOR PROMOTION. I5I 

had brought Napoleon into so many scrapes, was not 
forgotten. Bouquet was a bad fellow. Years after, 
he was caught doing some great mischief; and Napo- 
leon, as his superior officer, would have been obliged 
to punish him. But when he heard that Bouquet had 
escaped from prison, he really felt relieved. 

" Bouquet was my old schoolfellow at Brienne," 
he said. " I am glad I did not have to punish him." 

Whenever he had the chance, after he had risen 
to honor and power, he would do his old schoolmates 
and teachers at Brienne school a service. Bourrienne 
and Lauriston were both advanced and honored. To 
one teacher he gave the post of palace librarian ; an- 
other was appointed the head of the School of Fine 
Arts ; Father Patrault, who had been his friend and 
had taught him mathematics, was made one of his 
secretaries ; other teachers he helped with pensions 
or positions ; and even the porter of the school was 
made porter of one of the palaces when Napoleon 
became an emperor. 

At last, as I have told you, when the opportunity 
came, Napoleon said good-by to Brienne school. He 



152 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

left before his time was up, in order to give his 
younger brother, Lucien, the chance for a scholarship 
in the school ; he put aside with regret, but without 
complaining, the wished-for assignment to the naval 
service. He decided to become an artillery officer ; 
and on October 17, in the year 1784, he started for 
Paris to enter upon his " king's scholarship" in the 
military school. He had been a schoolboy at Brienne 
five years and a half. He was now a boy of fifteen. 



NAPOLEON GOES TO PARIS, 1 53 



CHAPTER FOURTEEN. 



NAPOLEON GOES TO PARIS. 



Some boys at fifteen are older than other boys at 
fifteen. Napoleon, as I have told you, was always an 
" old boy." So when, on that October day in 1784, he 
arriv^ed at the capital to enter upon the king's scholar- 
ship which he had received, he was no longer a child, 
even though under-sized and somewhat " spindling." 

Here, however, as at Autun and Brienne, his ap- 
pearance was against him, and created an unfavorable 
impression. 

As he got out of the Brienne coach, he ran al- 
most into the arms of one of the boys he had known 
at Corsica — young Demetrius Comneno. 

"What, Demetrius! you here?" he cried, a smile 
of pleasure at sight of a familiar face lighting up his 
sallow features. 

" And why not, young Bonaparte," Demetrius 



154 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOEEON. 

laughed back in reply. " You did not suppose I was 
going- to let you fall right into the lion's mouth, 
undefended. Why, you are so fresh and green look- 
ino-, the beast would take vou for Corsican orfass, and 
eat you at once." 

Although Napoleon was inclined to resent this 
pleasantry, he was too delighted to meet an old friend 
to say much. And, the truth is, the great city did 
surprise him. For, even though he had been five 
years at Brienne school, he was still a country boy, 
and walked the streets gaping and staring at every- 
thing he saw, like a boy at his first circus. 

"Why, boy! if I were not with you," said Deme- 
trius, with the superior air of the boy who knows city 
ways, " I don't know what snare you would not fall 
into. While you were staring at the City Hall, or the 
Soldier's Home, or that big statue of King Henry 
on the brido-e, one of those street-boys who is laugh- 
ino- at you yonder would have picked your pockets, 
snatched your satchel, or perhaps (who knows ?) cut 
your throat. Oh, yes! they do such things in Paris. 
You must learn to look out for yourself here." 



NAPOLEON GOES TO PARIS. 155 

" I think I am big enough for that," cried Napoleon. 

" You big! why, you are but a child, young Bona- 
parte!" Demetrius exclaimed. "But we'll make a man 
of you at the Paris school." 

The boys at the Paris Military School — the West 
Point of France in those days — proceeded at once to 
try to "make a man" of Napoleon in the same way 
that all boys seem ever ready to do ; as, indeed, the 
boys at Autun and Brienne had done — by poking fun 
at the new cadet, mimicking his manners, ridiculing 
his appearance, and making life generally unpleasant. 

But Napoleon had learned one thing by his bitter 
experiences at the other schools he had attended, — 
he had learned to control his temper, and take things 
as they came, with less of revenge and sullenness. 
The kindly criticism of his friends, General Marbeuf 
and Inspector de Keralio, had left their effect upon 
him ; and besides the companionship of his fellow- 
countryman, Demetrius Comneno, he had the good 
fortune to make his first really boy-friend in his room- 
mate at the military school. This was young Alex- 
ander des Mazes, a fine lad of his own ao^e, " a noble 



156 THE ROY T.IFE OF NAPOLEON. 

by birth and nature," who conceived a Hking for 
Napoleon at once, and was his friend for many 
years. 

In Paris, too, he had the advantage of tlie friend- 
ship of a fine Corsican family, — the Permous, rela- 
tives of Demetrius, and old acquaintances of the Bona- 
parte family. His sister Eliza was also at school at the 
girls' academy of St. Cyr ; and Napoleon visited her 
frequently, and talked over home matters and other 
mutual interests. For Napoleon had long- since forgiven 
and fororotten the trouble into which Eliza had once 
plunged him because of her love for the fruit of their 
uncle, the canon ; and the brother and sister could 
now laugh over that childish experience, while Eliza 
dearly loved Napoleon, in spite of her selfishness, and 
even because of his so uncomplainingly bearing her 
punishment. 

Napoleon, though "an odd child," as people called 
him, was wide awake and critical. He observed every- 
thing, and thought much. He was not long in noticing 
one thino": that was, the recklessness, the extravao^ance, 
and the indifference of the boys who were being; edu- 



NAPOLEON GOES TO PARIS. 1 57 

cated at the king's expense in the king's mihtary 
school. 

Most of these boys were of high birth, accustomed 
to having their own way, and with extravagant tastes 
and notions. Napoleon spoke of this frequently to 
the friends he made ; but both Demetrius and Alex- 
ander laughed at him, and said, " Well, what of it ? 
Would you have us all digs and hermits — like you? 
Here is the chance to have a orood time, to live hicrh, 
and to let the king pay for it — the king or our 
fathers. Why shouldn't we do as we please ? " 

"But, Demetrius!" Napoleon protested, "that is 
not the way to make soldiers. Do you think those 
fellows will be good officers, if they never know what 
it is to deny themselves, or to do the work that is 
their duty, but which they leave for servants to do ? " 
For Napoleon, you see, had many of the saving ways 
of his practical mother, and rebelled at the unconcern 
of these luxury-loving and careless boys, who were 
supposed to be learning the discipline of soldiers in 
their Paris school. 

Demetrius only snapped his fingers, as Alexander 



158 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

shrugged his shoulders, in contempt of what they con- 
sidered Napoleon's countrified way. 

But all this show of pomp and luxury really 
troubled this boy, who had long before learned the 
value of money and the need of self-denial. Indeed, 
it worried him so much that one day he sat down 
and wrote a letter which he intended to send as a 
protest to the minister of war, actually lecturing that 
high and mighty officer, and "giving him points" on 
the proper way to educate boys in the French military 
schools. 

Fortunately for him, he sent the letter first to his 
old instructor, the principal of the Brienne school. 
And the instructor — even though he, perhaps, agreed 
with this boy-critic — saw how foolish and hurtful for 
Napoleon's interest it would be to send such a sur- 
prising letter ; and he promptly suppressed it. But 
the letter still exists ; and a curious epistle it is for 
a fifteen-year-old boy to write. Here is a part of it : 

"The king's scholars," so Napoleon wrote to the 
minister, "could only learn in this school, In place 
of qualities of the heart, feelings of vanity and self- 



NAPOLEON GOES TO PARIS. 159 

satisfaction to such an extent, that, on returning to 
their own homes, they would be far from sharing 
gladly in the simple comfort of their families, and 
would perhaps blush for their fathers and mothers, 
and despise their modest country surroundings. Instead 
of maintaining a large staff of servants for these pupils, 
and giving them every day meals of several courses, 
and keeping up an expensive stable full of horses and 
grooms, would it not be better, Mr. Minister — of 
course without interrupting their studies — to compel 
them to look after their own wants themselves ? That 
is to say, without compelling them to really do their 
own cooking, would it not be wise to have them eat 
soldiers' bread or something no better, to accustom 
them to beat and brush their own clothes, to clean 
their own boots and shoes, and do other things equally 
useful and self-helpful? If they were thus accustomed 
to a sober life, and to be particular about their appear- 
ance, they would become healthier and stronger ; they 
could support with courage the hardships of war, and 
inspire with respect and blind devotion the soldiers 
who would have to serve under their orders." 



l6o THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

How do you think the grand minister of war would 
have felt to get such a lecturing on discipline from a 
boy at school ? and what do you imagine the boys 
would have done had they heard that one of their 
schoolmates had written a letter, suggesting that they 
be deprived of their pleasures and pamperings ? It 
was lucky for young Napoleon that the principal at 
Brienne eot hold of the letter before It was forwarded 
to the war minister. 

But then, as you have heard before. Napoleon was an 
odd boy. He thought so himself when he grew to be a 
man, and he laughed at the recollection of his manners. 
He laid it all, however, to the responsibility he had felt, 
even from the day when he was a little fellow, because 
of the needs of his hard-pushed family in Corsica. " All 
these cares," he once said, looking back over his boy- 
life, " spoiled my early years ; they influenced my tem- 
per, and made me grave before my time." 

Even if he did not send that critical and most unwise 
letter for a boy of his standing, the insight he gained 
into the expensive ways of the pupils at the military 
school had its effect upon him; and the very criticisms 



NAPOLEON GOES TO PARIS. l6l 

of that remarkable letter were used for their original 
purpose when Napoleon came to authority and power. 
For, when he was emperor of France, he gave to the 
minister who had the military schools in charge this 
order: "No pupil is to cost the state more than 
twenty-five cents a day. These pupils are sons either 
of soldiers or ot working-men ; it is absolutely con- 
trary to my intention to give them habits of life which 
can only be hurtful to them." 

If Napoleon was so critical as to the ways and 
style of his schoolmates, he certainly set the lesson in 
economy for himself that he suggested for them. 

To be sure, he had no money to waste or to spend ; 
but he might have been hail-fellow with the other boys, 
and joined in their luxuries, had he but been willing to 
borrow, as did the rest of them. But Napoleon had 
always a horror of debt. He had acquired this from 
his mother's teachings and his father's spendthrift ways. 
Even as a boy, however, his will was so strong, his 
power of self-denial was so great, that he continued 
in what he considered the path of duty, unmindful 
of the boyish charges of " mean fellow" and "pauper" 



1 62 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

that the spoiled spendthrifts of the school had no hes- 
itation in casting at him. 

■ At last, however, these culminated almost in an 
open row ; and Napoleon found himself called upon 
either to explain his position, or become both unpopular 
and an "outcast" because of what his schoolmates 
considered his stinginess and parsimony. 

It was this way — But I had better tell you the 
story in a new chapter. 



i 



A TROUBLE OVER POCKET MONEY. 1 63 



CHAPTER FIFTEEN. 

A TROUBLE OVER POCKET MONEY. 

It was the twelfth of June in the year 1785 that 
a eroup of scholars was standino-, durinof the recess 
hour, in a corner of the military school of Paris. 

They were all boys ; but they assumed the manners 
and gave themselves the airs of princes of the blood. 

"Gentlemen," said one who seemed to be most 
prominent in the group, " I have called you together 
on a most important matter. To-morrow is old Bauer's 
birthday. I propose that, as is our custom, we take 
some notice of it. What do 3^ou say to giving him 
a little supper, in the name of the school ? " 

" A good idea ; a capital idea, d'Hebonville ! " ex- 
claimed most of the boys, in ready acquiescence. 

"A gluttonous idea, I call it; and an expensive 
one," said one upon the outer edge of the circle, in 
a sharply critical tone. 



164 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

" Ah, our little joker has a word to say," exclaimed 
one of the boys sarcastically, drawing back, and push- 
ing- the speaker to the front ; " hear him." 

" Oh, now, Napoleon ! don't object," young Alex- 
ander des Mazes said. " Did you not hear why d'He- 
bonville proposed the supper ? It is to honor the 
German teacher's birthday." 

" Oh, he heard it fast enough, des Mazes," rejoined 
d'Hebonville. "That is what makes him so cross." 

" Why do you say that ? " Napoleon demanded. 

" You do not, like the plan because it is to honor old 
Bauer; for you do not like him," d'Hebonville replied. 
"If, now, it were a supper to the history teacher, you 
would agree, I am sure. For de I'Equille praises you 
on ' the profundity of your reflections and the sagacity 
of your judgment.' Oh, I've read his notes ; or you 
would agree if it were Domaisen, the rhetoric teacher, 
who is much impressed — those are his very words, are 
they not, gentlemen ? — with ' your powers of general- 
ization, which ' he says, are even ' as granite heated 
at a volcano.' But as it is only dear old Bauer " — 
and d'Hebonville shrugged his shoulders significantly. 



A TROUBLE OVER POCKET MONEY. 1 65 

" Well, and what about ' dear old Bauer,' as you 
call him?" cried Napoleon ; " finish, sir; finish, I say." 

" I will tell you what Father Bauer says of you, 
Napoleon," said cles Mazes laughingly, as he laid his 
arm familiarly about Napoleon's neck ; "he says he 
does not think much of you, because you make no 
progress in your German ; and as old Bauer thinks the 
world moves only for Germans, he has nothing good 
to say of one who makes no mark in his dear lan- 
guage. ' Ach ! ' says old Bauer, ' your Napoleon Bona- 
parte will never be anything but a fool. He knows 
no German.' " 

The boys laughed loudly at des Mazes's mimicry of 
the German teacher's manner and speech. But Napo- 
leon smiled with the air of one who felt himself su- 
perior to the teacher of German. 

" Now, I should say," said Philip Mabille, " that here 
is the very reason why Napoleon should not refuse to 
join us. It will be — what are the words? — *»heaping 
coals of fire ' on old Bauer's head." 

" That might be so," Napoleon agreed, in a better 
humor. "But why give him a feast? Let us — I'll 



l66 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

tell you — let us give him a spectacle. A battle, per- 
haps." 

"In which you should be a general, I suppose, as 
you were in that snow-ball fight at Brienne, of which 
we have heard once or twice," said d'Hebonville sar- 
castically. 

"And why not?" asked Napoleon haughtily. 

" Or the death of Caesar, like the tableaux we ar- 
ranged at Brienne," suofS^ested Demetrius Comneno en- 
thusiastically. 

" In which your great Napoleon played Brutus, I 
suppose," said d'Hebonville. " No, no ; the birthday 
of old Bauer is not a solemn occasion to demand a 
battle or a spectacle ; something much more simple 
will do for a professor of German. Let us make it a 
good collation. There are fifteen of us in his class. 
If each one of us contributes five dollars, we could 
get up quite a feast." 

"Oh, see here, d'Hebonville!" cried Mabille ; "think 
a little. Five dollars is a good deal for some of us. 
Not all of the fifteen can afford so much. I don't 
believe I could; nor you, Napoleon, could you?" 



A TROUBLE OVER POCKET MONEY. 167 

Napoleon's face grew sober, but he said nothing. 

" Oh, well ! let only those pay then who can," 
said d'Hcbonville. 

"Who, then, will take part in your feast?" de- 
manded Napoleon. 

" Why, all of us, of course," replied d'Hebonville. 

" At the feast, or in giving- the money," queried 
Mabille. 

" At the feast, to be sure," d'Hebonville answered. 

" Come, now ; we should have no feeling in this 
matter," cried des Mazes. " We will decide for you, 
Mabille." 

" Old Bauer must not dream that there are any 
of his class who do not share in the matter," said 
Comneno. "That would be showing a preference, and 
a preference is never fair." 

"And do you wish, then," said Mabille, "that old 
Bauer should be under obligation to me, for example, 
who can pay little or nothing toward the feast ? " 

" Certainly ; to you as much as to the richest among 
us," said d'Hebonville. 

" Bah ! " cried Napoleon. " That would imply a 



l68 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

sentiment of gratitude toward my masters ; and I, for 
one, have none to this Professor Bauer." 

" Some one to see Napoleon Bonaparte," said a 
porter of the school, appearing at the door of the 
schoolroom. " He waits in the parlor." 

V/ithout a word Napoleon left his school-fellows ; 
but they looked after him with faces expressive of 
disapproval or disappointment. 

The disagreeable impression produced by the dis- 
cussion in which he had been taking part still re- 
mained with Napoleon as he entered the parlor to 
meet his visitor. It was the friend of his family, 
Monsieur de Permon. 

Napoleon, indeed, w^as scarce able to greet his visitor 
pleasantly. But Monsieur de Permon, without appear- 
ing to notice the boy's ill-humor, greeted him pleas- 
antly, and said, — 

" Madame de Permon and I are on our way to the 
Academy of St. Cyr, to see your sister Eliza. Would 
YOU not like to go with us, Napoleon ? I have per- 
mission for you to be absent." 

Napoleon brightened at this invitation, and gladly 



A TROUBLE OVER POCKET MONEY. 1 69 

accepted it, The two proceeded to the carriage, in 
which Madame Permon was awaiting them ; and the 
three were soon on the road to the school of St. 
Cyr, in which, as I have told you, Eliza Bonaparte 
was a scholar. 

They were ushered into the* parlor, and Eliza was 
summoned. She soon appeared ; but she entered the 
room slowly and disconsolately ; her eyes were red with 
crying. Eliza was evidently in trouble. 

"Why, Eliza, my dear child, what is the matter?" 
Madame Permon exclaimed, drawinof the Q-'irl toward 
her. " You have been crying. Have they been scold- 
ing you here? " 

" No, madame," Eliza replied in a low tone. 

" Are you afraid they may ? Have you trouble 
with your lessons?" persisted Madame Permon. 

With the same dejected air, Eliza answered as be- 
fore, " No, madame." 

"But what, then, is the matter, my dear?" cried 
Madame Permon ; " such red eyes mean much crying." 

Eliza was silent. 

"Come, Eliza!" Napoleon demanded with an elder 



I/O 



THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 



brother's authority; "speak! answer Madame here 
What is the matter ? " 

But even to her brother, EHza miade no reply. 




•"Come, Eliza! What is the matter?' demanded Napoleon." 

Then Madame Permon, as tenderly as if she had 
been the girl's mother, led her aside ; and finding a 



A TROUBLE OVER POCKET MONEY. I7I 

remote seat in a corner, she drew the child into her 
lap. 

" Eliza," she said with o-racious kindliness, " I must 
know why you are in sorrow. Think of me as your 
mother, dear; as one who must act in her place until 
you return to her. Speak to me as to your mother. 
Let me have your love and confidence. Tell me, 
my child, what troubles you." 

The tender solicitude of her mother's friend quite 
vanquished Eliza's stubbornness. Her tears burst out 
afresh; and between the sobs she stammered, — 

^' You know, Madame, that Lucie de IVIontluc leaves 
the school in eight days." 

"I did not know it, Eliza," Madame Permon said, 
keeping back a smile; "but if that so overcomes 
you, then am I sorry too." 

"Oh, no, Madame!" Eliza said, just a bit indig- 
nant at beino- misunderstood ; " it is not her leaving 
that makes me cry ; but! you see, on the day she goes 
away her class will give her a good-by supper." 

"What! and you are not invited?" exclaimed 
Madame Permon. 



172 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

" Ah, that is the trouble, Madame," cried Eliza, 
the tears oratherine ao-ain. " I am invited." 

"And yet you cry?" 

"It is because each g-irl is to contribute towards 
the supper; and I, Madame, can give nothing. My 
allowance is gone." 

" So ! " Madame Permon whispered, glad to have 
at last reached the real cause of the trouble, "that is 
the matter. And you have nothing left ? " 

" Only a dollar, Madame," replied Eliza. " But if 
I give that, I shall have no more money ; and my 
allowance does not come to me for six weeks. Indeed, 
what I have is not enough for my needs until the 
six Vv^eeks are over. Am I not miserable?" 

Napoleon, who had gradually drawn nearer the 
corner, thrust his hand into his pocket as he heard 
Eliza's complaint. But he drew it out as quickly. His 
pocket was empty. Mortified and angry, he stamped 
his foot in despair. But no one noticed this pantomime. 

" How much, my dear, is necessary to quiet this 
ereat sorrow ? " Madame Permon asked of Eliza with 
a smile. 



A TROUBLE OVER POCKET MONEY. I 73 

Eliza looked into her good friend's eyes. 

"Oh, Madame ! it is an immense sum," she replied. 

" Let me know the worst," Madame Permon said, 
with affected distress. "How much is it?" 

"Two dollars ! " confessed Eliza in despair. 

" Two dollars ! " exclaimed Madame Permon ; "what 
extravagant ladies we are at St. Cyr ! " Then she hugged 
Eliza to her ; and, as she did so, she slyly slipped a 
five-dollar piece into the girl's hand. " Hush ! take 
it, and say nothing," she said ; for, above all, she did 
not wish her action to be seen by Napoleon. For 
Madame Permon well knew the sensitive pride of the 
Bonaparte children. 

Soon after they left the school ; and when once they 
were within the carriage Napoleon's ill-humor burst 
forth, in spite of himself. 

"Was ever anything more humiliating?" he cried; 
" was ever anything more unjust ? See how it is with 
that poor child. The rich and poor are placed to- 
gether, and the poor must suffer or be pensioners. 
Is it not abominable, the way these schools of St. Cyr 
and the Paris military are run ? Two dollars for a 



174 ^^^ ^^^'^ LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

scholars' picnic in a place where no child is supposed 
to have money. It is enormous ! " 

His friends made no reply to this boyish outburst ; 
but, when the military school was reached, Monsieur 
Pcrmon followed Napoleon into the parlor. 

"Napoleon," he said, "at your age one is not 
furious against the world unless, he has particular 
reason." 

" And are not my sister's tears a reason, sir, when 
I cannot remedy their cause ? " Napoleon answered 
with emotion. 

" But when I came here for you," said Mon- 
sieur Permon, " you, too, appeared angry, as if some 
trouble had occurred between yourself and your school- 
fellows." 

" I am unfortunate, sir, not to be able to conceal 
my feelings," said Napoleon; "but it does seem as 
if the boys here delighted in making me feel my pov- 
erty. They live in an insolent luxury ; and whoever 
cannot imitate them," — here Napoleon dashed a hand 
to his forehead, — "Oh, it is to die of humiliation!" 

" At your age, my Napoleon, one submits and 



A TROUBLE OVER POCKET MONEY. 1 75 

blames no one," said Monsieur Permon, smiling, in 
spite of himself, at the boy's desperation. 

" At my age ! yes, sir," Napoleon rejoined, as if 
keeping back some great thought. "But later — ah, 
if, some day, I should ever be master ! However " — 
and the French shrug that is so elocjuent completed 
the sentence. 

'' However," — Monsieur Permon took up his 
words — "while waiting, one may now and then find 
a friend. And you take your part here with the 
boys, do you not ? " 

Napoleon was silent ; and Monsieur Permon, remem- 
berino" the trouble that had weighed Eliza down, con- 
eluded also that some such trial might be a part of 
Napoleon's school-life. 

" Let me help you, my boy," he said. 

At this unexpected proposition Napoleon flushed 
deeply ; then the red tinge paled into the sallow one 
again, and he responded, " I thank you, sir, but I do 
not need it." 

" Napoleon," said Monseiur Permon, " your mother is 
my wife's dearest friend ; your father has long been my 



I -^6 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

oood comrade. Is it rio-ht for sons to refuse the love of 
their fathers, or for boys to reject the friendships of 
their elders ? Pride is excellent ; but even pride may 
sometimes be pernicious. It is pride that sets a barrier 
between you and your companions. Do not permit it. 
Regard friendship as of more value than self-considera- 
tion ; and, for my sake, let me help you to join in these 
occasions that may mean so much to you in the way of 
friendship." 

Thus deftly did good Monseiur Permon smooth over 
the bitterness that inequality in pocket allowances so 
often stirs between those who have little and those 
who have much. 

Napoleon fixed upon his father's friend one of his 
piercing looks, and taking his proffered money, said : — 

" I accept it, sir, as if it came from my father, as 
you wish me to consider it. But it it came as a loan, 
I could not receive it. My people have too many 
charges already ; and I ought not to increase them by 
expenses which, as is often the case here, are put 
upon me by the folly of my schoolfellows." 

The Permons proved good friends to the Bona- 



A TROUBLE OVER POCKET MONEY. 1 77 

parte children ; and it was to their house at Mont- 
pelHer that, in the spring of 17S5, Charles Bonaparte 
was brought to die. 

For ill health and misfortune proved too much for 
this disheartened Corsican gentleman ; and, before his 
boys were grown to manhood, he gave up his unsuc- 
cessful struggle for place and fortune. He had worked 
hard to do his best for his boys and girls ; he had 
done much that the world considers unmanly ; he 
had changed and shifted, sought favors from the great 
and rich, and taken service that he neither loved nor 
approved. But he had done all this that his children 
miofht be advanced in the world ; and though he 
died in debt, leaving his family almost penniless, still 
he had spent himself in their behalf; and his children 
loved and honored his memory, and never forgot the 
strupfsrles their father had made in their behalf. In 
fact, much of his spirit of family devotion descended 
to his famous son Napoleon, the schoolboy. 



1/8 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 



CHAPTER SIXTEEN. 

LIEUTENANT PUSS-IN-BOOTS. 

Napoleon returned to his studies after his father's 
death, poorer than ever in pocket, and greatly dis- 
tressed over his mother's condition. 

For Charles Bonaparte's death had taken away 
from the family its main support. The income of their 
uncle, the canon, was hardly sufficient for the family's 
needs. Joseph gave up his endeavors, and returned 
to Corsica to help his mother. But Napoleon remained 
at the military school ; for his future depended upon 
his completing his studies, and securing a position in 
the army. 

How much the boy had his mother in his thoughts, 
you may judge from this letter which he wrote her a 
month after his father's death : 

My dear Mother, — Now that time has begun to soften the 
first transports of my sorrow, I hasten to express to you the grati- 



LIEUTENANT PUSS-FN-BOOTS. 1 79 

tude I feel for all the kindness you have always displayed toward 
us. Console yourself, dear mother ; circumstances require that you 
should. We will redouble our care and our gratitude, happy if, by 
our obedience, we can make up to you in the smallest degree for 
the inestimable loss of a cherished husband. I finish, dear mother, 
— my grief compels it — by praying you to calm yours. My health 
is perfect, and my daily prayer is that Heaven may grant you the 
same. Convey my respects to my Aunt Gertrude, to Nurse Saveria, 
and to my Aunt Fesch. 

Your very humble and affectionate son. 

Napoleon. 

At the same time he wrote to his kind old uncle, 
the Canon Lucien, saying-: "It would be useless to tell 
you how deeply I have felt the blow that has just 
fallen upon us. We have lost a father; and God alone 
knows what a father, and what were his attachment 
and devotion to us. Alas ! everything- taught us to 
look to him as the support of our youth. But the will 
of God is unalterable. He alone can console us." 

These letters from a boy of sixteen would scarcely 
give one the idea that Napoleon was the selfish and 
sullen youth that his enemies are forever picturing ; 
they rather show him as he was, — quiet, reserved, 
reticent, but with a heart that could feel for others, 



l8o THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

and a sympathy that strove to lessen, for the mother 
he loved, the burden of sorrow and of loss. 

That the death of his father, and the "hard times" 
that came upon the Bonapartes through the loss ot 
their chief bread-winner, did sober the boy Napoleon, 
and made him even more retiring and reserved, there 
is no doubt. His old friend. General Marbeuf, was 
no longer in condition to help him ; and, indeed, Napo- 
leon's pride would not permit him to receive aid from 
friends, even when it was forced upon him. 

" I am too poor to run into debt," he declared. 

So he became again a hermit, as in the early days at 
Brienne school. He applied himself to his studies, read 
much, and longed for the day when he should be trans- 
ferred from the school to the army. 

The day came sooner than even he expected. He 
had scarcely been a year at the Paris school when he 
was ordered to appear for his final examination. 
Whether it was because his teachers pitied his pov- 
erty, and wished him to have a chance for himself, or 
whether because, as some would have us believe, they 
wished to be rid of a scholar who criticised their 



LIEUTENANT PUSS-IN-BOOTS. 151 

methods, and was fault-finding, unsocial, and " exas- 
perating," it is at least certain that the boy took his 
examinations, and passed them satisfactorily, standing 
number forty in a class of fifty-eight. 

" You are a lucky boy, my Napoleon," said his room- 
mate, Alexander des Mazes ; " see ! you are ahead of 
me. I am number fifty-six ; pretty near to the foot 
that, eh ? " 

"Near enough, Alexander," Napoleon replied; "but 
I love you fifty-six times better than any of the other 
boys ; and what would you have, ni}'^ friend ? Are not 
we two of the six selected for the artillery ? That is 
some compensation. Now let us apply for an appoint- 
ment in the same regiment." 

They did so, and secured each a lieutenancy in an 
artillery regiment. This, however, was not hard to 
secure ; for the artillery service was considered the 
hardest in the army ; and the lazy young nobles and 
gentlemen of the Paris military school had no desire 
for real work. 

The certificate given to Napoleon upon his gradua- 
tion read thus : — 



1 82 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

" This young man is reserved and studious ; he prefers study to 
any amusement, and enjoys reading the best authors ; appUes him- 
self earnestly to the abstract sciences ; cares little for anything else. 
He is silent, and loves solitude. He is capricious, haughty, and 
excessively egotisical ; talks little, but is quick and energetic in his 
replies ; prompt and severe in his repartees ; has great pride and am- 
bition, aspiring to any thing. The young man is worthy of patron- 
age." 

And upon the margin of the report one of the exam- 
ing officers wrote this extra indorsement : — 

" A Corsican by character and by birth. If favored by circum- 
stances, this young man will rise high." 

Napoleon's school-Hfe was over. On the first of 
September, 1755, he received the papers appointing 
him second-heutenant in the artillery regiment, named 
La Fere (or "the sword"), and was ordered to re- 
port at the garrison at Valence. His room-mate and 
friend, Alexander des Mazes, was appointed to the 
same re^-iment. 

It was a proud day for the boy of sixteen. At last 
his school-life was at an end. He was to go into the 
world as a man and a soldier. 

I am afraid he did not look very much like a 
man, even if he felt that he was one. But he put on 



M 



LIEUTENANT PUSS-IN-BOOTS. 1 83 

his uniform of lieutenant, and in high spirits set off 
to visit his friends, the Permons. 

They Hved in a house on one of the river streets 
— Monsieur and Madame Permon, and their two 
daugliters, Ceciha and Laura. 

Now, both these daughters were httle girls, and as 
ready to see the funny side of things as little girls 
usually are. 

So when Lieutenant Napoleon Bonaparte, aged six- 
teen, came into the room, proud of his new uniform, 
and feeling that he looked very smart, Laura glanced 
at Cecilia, and Cecilia smiled at Laura, and then both 
ofirls beo-an to lauo^h. 

Madam Permon glanced at them reprovingly, while 
welcoming the young lieutenant with pleasant words. 

But the boy felt that the girls were laughing at 
him, and he turned to look at himself in the mirror 
to see what was wronor. 

Nothing was wrong. It was simply Napoleon ; but 
Napoleon just then was not a handsome boy. Long- 
haired, laro-e-headed, sallow-faced, stiff-stocked, and 
feeling very new in his new uniform (which could 



184 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

not be very gorgeous, however, because the boy's 
pocket would not admit of any extras in the way 
of adornment on decoration), he was, I expect, 
rather a pinchecl-looking, queer-looking boy ; . and, 
moreover, his boots were so big, and his legs were 
so thin, that the legs appeared lost in the boots. 

As he glanced at himself in the mirror, the girls 
p"io'2'led aeain, and their mother said, — 

" Silly ones, why do you laugh ? Is our new uni- 
form so marvellous a change that you do not recog- 
nize Lieutenant Bonaparte ? " 

"Lieutenant Bonaparte, mamma!" cried fun-loving 
Laura. " No, no ! not that. See ! is not Napoleon 
for all the world like — like Lieutenant Puss -in - 
Boots ? " 

Whereupon they laughed yet more merrily, and 
Napoleon laughed with them. 

" My boots are big, indeed," he said ; " too big, 
perhaps ; but I hope to grow into them. How was it 
with Puss-in-Boots, girls? He filled his well at last, 
did he not ? You will be sorry you laughed at me, 
some day, when I march into your house, a big, fat 



LIEUTENANT PUSS-IN-BOOTS. 



185 



general. Come, let us go and see Eliza. They may 
go with me, eh, Madame ? " 

" Yes ; go with the lieutenant, children," said Ma- 
dame Permon, 




■'Like — like Lieutenant Puss-in-Boots! " 

So they all went to call on Eliza, at the school of 
St. Cyr ; and you may be sure that she admired her 
brother, the new lieutenant, boots and all. And as 
they came home, Napoleon took the little girls into a 



1 86 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

toy-Store, and bought for them a toy-carriage, in which 
he placed a doll dressed as Puss-in-boots. 

" It is the carriage of the Marquis of Carabas, my 
children," he said, as they went to the Permons' house 
by the river. " And when I am at Valence, you will 
look at this, and think again of your friend. Lieutenant 
Puss-in-Boots." 

But between the date of his commission and his 
orders to join his regiment at Valence a whole month 
passed, in which time Napoleon's funds ran very low. 
Indeed, he was so completely penniless, that, when 
the orders did come, Napoleon had nothing ; and his 
friend Alexander had just enough to get them both 
to Lyons. 

"What shall we do? I have nothing left Napoleon," 
said Alexander; "and Valence is still miles away." 

" We can walk, Alexander," said Napoleon. 

" But one must eat, my friend," Alexander replied 
ruefully. For boys of sixteen have good appetites, 
and do not like to go hungry. 

" True, one must eat," said Napoleon. " Ah, I 
have it ! We will call upon Monsieur Barlet." 



LIEUTENANT PUSS-IN-BOOTS. 1 87 

Now, Monsieur Barlet was a friend of the Bona- 
partes, and had once hved in Corsica. So bodi boys 
hunted him up, and Napoleon told their story. 

" Well, my valiant soldiers of the king," laughed 
Monsieur Barlet, "what is the best way out? Come; 
fall back on your training at the military school. 
What line of conduct, my Napoleon, would you adopt, 
if you were besieged in a fortress and were des- 
titute of provisions ? " 

" My faith, sir," answered Napoleon promptly, " so 
long as there were any provisions in the enemy's camp 
I would never go hungry." 

Monsieur Barlet laughed heartily. 

" By which you mean," he said, " that I am the 
enemy's camp, and you propose to forage on me for 
provisions, eh ? Good, very good, that ! See, then, 
I surrender. Accept, most noble warriors, a tribute 
from the enemy." 

And with that he gave the boys a little money, and 
a letter of introduction to his friend at Valence, the 
Abbe (or Reverend) Saint Raff. 

But Lyons is a pleasant city, where there is much 



1 88 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

to see and plenty to do. So, when the boys left 
Lyons, they had spent most of Monsieur Barlet's 
" tip " ; and, to keep the balance for future use, they 
fell back on their original intention, and walked all 
the way from Lyons to Valence. 

Thus it was that Napoleon joined his regiment ; 
and on the fifth of November 1755, he and Alexander, 
foot-sore, but full of boyish spirits, entered the old gar- 
rison-town of Valence in Southern France, and were 
warmly welcomed by Alexander's older brother, Captain 
Gabriel des Mazes, of the La Fere regiment, who at 
once took the boys in charge, and introduced them to 
their new life as soldiers of the orarrison of Valence. 



DARK DAYS. 189 



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. 

DARK DAYS. 

It does not take boys and girls long to find out 
that realization is not always equal to anticipation. 
Especially is this so with thoughtful, sober-minded 
boys like the young Napoleon. 

At first, on his arrival at Valence, as lieutenant in 
his regiment, he set out to have a good time. 

He took lodging with an old maid who let out 
rooms to young officers, in a house on Grand Street, 
in the town of Valence. Her name was Mademoiselle 
Bon. She kept a restaurant and billiard-room ; and 
Napoleon's room was on the first floor, fronting the 
street, and next to the noisy billiard-room. This was 
not a particularly favorable place for a boy to pursue 
his studies ; and at first Napoleon seem disposed to 
make the most of what boys would call his "freedom." 
He went to balls and parties ; became a " great 



190 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON, 

talker ; " took dancing lessons of Professor Dautre, and 
tried to become what is called a " society man." 

But it suited neither his tastes nor his desires, and 
made a large hole in his small pay as lieutenant. In- 
deed, after paying for his board anci lodging, he had 
left onl)/ about seven dollars a month to spend for 
clothes and " fun." So he soon tired of this attempt 
to keep up appearances on a little money. He took to 
his books again, studying philosophy, geography, his- 
tory, and mathematics. He thought he might make 
a living by his pen, and concluded to become an 
author. So he began writing a history of his native 
island — Corsica. 

He even tried a novel ; but boys of seventeen are 
not very well fitted for real literary work, and his first 
attempts were but poor affairs. His reading in history 
and geography drew his attention to Asia ; and he al- 
ways had a boyish dream of what he should like to 
attempt and achieve in the half- fabled land of India, 
where he believed great success and vast riches were to 
be secured by an ambitious young man, who had knowl- 
edge of military affairs, and the taste for leadership. 



DARK DAYS. I9I 

At last he was ordered away on active service ; 
first to suppress what was known as the "Two-cent 
Rebehion " in Lyons, and after that to the town of 
Doiiay in Belgium. 

It was while there that bad news came to him from 
Corsica. His family was again in trouble. His mother 
had tried silkworm raising, and failed ; his uncle the 
canon was very sick ; his good friend and the patron 
of the family. General Marbeuf, was dead ; his brothers 
were unsuccessful in getting positions or employment ; 
and something must be done to help matters in the 
big bare house in Ajaccio. 

Worried over the news. Napoleon tried to get leave 
of absence, so as to go to Corsica and see what he 
could do. But this favor was not granted him. His 
anxiety made him low-spirited ; this brought on an 
attack of fever. The leave of absence was granted 
him because he was sick; and early in 1787 he went 
home to Corsica. 

He had been absent from home for eight years. At 
once he tried to set matters on a better footing. He 
fixed up the little house at Melilli, which had belonged 



192 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

to his mother's father; tried to help his mother in her 
attempts at mulberry-growing for the silkworms ; saw 
that his brother Joseph was enabled to go into the 
oil-trade ; brightened up his uncle the canon with 
his political discussions and a correspondence with a 
famous French physician as to the cure for his uncle's 
gout ; and finally, being recalled to his regiment, went 
back to Paris, and joined his regiment at Auxonne. 

While in garrison at this place, he lodged with Pro- 
fessor Lombard, a teacher of mathematics, whom he 
sometimes assisted in his classes. He worked hard, 
kept out of debt, ate little, and was " poor, but proud." 
He gained the esteem of his superiors ; for in a letter 
to Joey Fesch, who was now a priest, he wrote : 

"The general here thinks very well of me ; so much so, that he 
has ordered me to construct a polygon, — works for which great cal- 
culations are necessary, — and I am hard at work at the head of two 
hundred men. This unheard-of mark of favor has somewhat irri- 
tated the captains against me ; they declare it is insulting to them 
that a lieutenant should be intrusted with so important a work, and 
that, when more than thirty men are employed, one of them should 
not have been sent out also. My comrades also have shown some 
jealousy, but it will pass. What troubles me is my health, which 
does not seem to me very good." 



DARK DAYS. 1 93 

Indeed, it was not very good. He was just at the 
age when a young fellow needs all the good food, 
healthful exercise, and restful sleep that are possible; 
and these Napoleon did not permit himself. The 
doctor of his regiment told him he must take better 
care ot himself; but that he did not, we know from 
this scrap from a letter to his mother : — 

" I have no resources but work. I dress but once in eight days, 
for the Sunday parade. I sleep but httle since my illness ; it is in- 
credible. I go to bed at ten o'clock, and get up at four in the morn- 
ing. I take but one meal a day, at three o'clock. But that is good 
for my health." 

The boy probably added that last line to keep his 
mother from feelino- anxious. But it was not true. 
Such a life for a growing boy is very bad for his 
health. Again Napoleon fell ill, obtained six months' 
sick leave, and went again to Corsica. This visit was 
a much longer one than the first. In fact, he over- 
stayed his leave ; got into trouble with the authorities 
because of this ; smoothed it over ; regained his health ; 
wrote and worked ; mixed himself up in Corsican poli- 
tics; became a fiery young advocate of liberty; and at 



194 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON, 

last, after a year's absence from France, returned to join 
his regiment at Auxonne, taking- with him his young 
brother, Louis, whom he had agreed to support and 
educate. 

It was quite a burden for this young man of twenty 
to assume. But Napoleon undertook it cheerfully ; he 
was glad to be able to do anything that should lighten 
his mother's burdens. 

The brothers did not have a particularly pleasant 
home at Auxonne. They lived in a bare room in the 
regimental barracks, " Number i6," up one flight of 
stairs. It was wretchedly furnished. It contained an 
uncurtained bed, a table, two chairs, and an old wooden 
box, which the boys used, both as bureau and book- 
case. Louis slept on a little cot-bed near his brother ; 
and how they lived on sixty cents a day — paying 
out of that for food, lodeina:, clothes, and books — is 
one of the mysteries. 

In fact, they nearly starved themselves. Napoleon 
made the broth ; brushed and mended their clothes ; 
sometimes had only dry bread for a meal ; and, as 
Napoleon said later, " bolted the door on his pov- 




'/ dreamed that I was a king,' said Louis." 



DARK DAYS. 1 97 

erty." That is to say, they went nowhere, and saw 
no one. 

It was hard on the young heutenant ; It was per- 
haps even harder on the httle brother. 

One morning-, after Napoleon had dressed himself 
and was preparing their poor breakfast, he knocked 
on the floor with his cane to arouse his brother and 
call him to breakfast and studies. 

Little Louis awoke so slowly that Napoleon was 
obliged to arouse him a second time. 

" Come, come, my Louis," he cried ; " what is the 
matter this morning ? It seems to me that you are 
very lazy." 

"Oh, brother!" answered the half-awaked child, "I 
was havinof such a beautiful dream ! " 

"And what did you dream?" asked Napoleon. 

The little Louis sat upright on the edge of his 
cot. " I dreamed that I was a king," he replied. 

" A king ! Well, well ! " exclaimed his brother, 
lauehine. Then he glanced around at the bare and 
poverty-stricken room. " And wdiat, then, your Maj- 
esty, was I, your brother, — an emperor perhaps?" 



198 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

Then he shrugged his shoulders, and pinched his 
brother's ear. 

" Well, kings and emperors must eat and work," 
he said, " the same as lieutenants and schoolboys. 
Come, then, King Louis ; some broth, and then to 
your duty." 

This was Napoleon at twenty, — a poverty-pinched, 
self-sacrificing, hard-working boy ; a man before his 
time ; knowing very little of fun and comfort, and very 
much of toil and trouble. 

He was an illy-proportloncd 3'oung man, not 3'et 
having outgrown the "spindling" appearance of his 
boyhood ; but even then he possessed certain of the 
remarkable features familiar to every boy and girl who 
has studied the portraits of Napoleon the emperor. 
His head was large and finely shaped, with a wide 
forehead, large mouth, and straight nose, a projecting 
chin, and large, steel-blue eyes, that were full of fire 
and power. His face was sallow, his hair brown and 
stringy, his cheeks lean from not too much o\^er- 
feeding. His body and legs were thin and small ; but 
his chest was broad, and his neck short and thick. 




Lieutenant Napoleon Bonaparte, Aged 22. 

{From the portrait by Jean Baptiste Grenze, in the I\{use2iin at Versailles.) 



DARK DAYS. 20I 

His step was firm and steady, with nothing of the 
" wobbly " gait we often see in people who are not 
well-proportioned. His character was undoubtedly that 
of a young man who had the desire to get ahead 
faster than his opportunities would permit. Solitude 
had made him uncommunicative and secretive ; anxiety 
and privation had made him self-helpful and self-re- 
liant ; lack of sympathy had made him calculating ; 
but doing for others had made him kind-hearted and 
generous. His reading and study had made him 
ambitious ; his knowledofe that when he knew a thino- 
he really knew it, made him masterful and desirous of 
leadership. He had few of the vices, and sowed but 
a small crop of what is called the " wild oats " of 
youth ; he abhorred debt, and scarcely ever owed a 
penny, even when in sorest straits ; and, while not a 
brio-ht nor a oreat scholar, what he had learned he 
was able to store away in his brain, to be drawn upon 
for use when, in later years, this knowledge could be 
used to advantaore. 

Such at twenty years of age was Napoleon Bonaparte. 
Such he remained through the years of his young man- 



202 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOI.EON. 

hood, meetino- all sorts of discouragements, facino- the 
hardest poverty, becoming disgusted with many things 
that occurred in those changing days, when liberty was 
replacing tyranny, and the lesson of free America was 
being read and committed by the world. 

He saw the turmoil and terrors of the French Rev- 
olution — that season of blood, when a long-suffering- 
people struck a blow at tyranny, murdered their king, 
and tried to build on the ruins of an overturned kingr- 

<_> 

dom an impossible republic. 

You will understand all this better when you come 
to read the history of France, and see through how 
many noble but mistaken efforts that fair European 
land struggled from tyranny to freedom. In these 
efforts Napoleon had a share ; and it was his boyhood 
of privation and his youth of discouragement that 
made him a man of purpose, of persistence and en- 
deavor, raising him step by step, in the days when 
men needed leaders but found none, until this one 
finally proved himself a leader indeed, and, grasping 
the reins of command, advanced steadily from the bar- 
racks to a throne. 



DARK DAYS. 203 

All this is history ; it is the story of the development 
and progress of the most remarkable man of modern 
times. You can read the story in countless books ; for 
now, after Napoleon has been dead for over seventy 
years, the world is learning to sift the truth from all 
the chaff of falsehood and fable that so long- sur- 
rounded him ; it is endeavoring to place this mar- 
vellous leader of men in the place he should rightly 
occupy — that of a great man, led by ambition and 
swayed by selfishness, but moved also by a desire 
to do noble things for the nation that he had raised 
to greatness, and the men who looked to him for 
guidance and direction. 

Our story of his boyhood ends here. For years 
after he came to young manhood fate seemed against 
him, and privation held him down. But he broke loose 
from all entanoflements ; he surmounted all obstacles ; he 
conquered all adverse circumstances. He rose to power 
by his own abilities. He led the armies of France to 
marvellous victories. He became the idol of his sol- 
diers, the hero of the people, the chief man in the 
nation, the controlling power in Europe ; and on the 



204 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

second of December, in the year 1804, he was crowned 
in the great church of Notre Dame, in Paris, Emperor 
of the French. "Straw-nose," the poverty-stricken 
httle Corsican, had become the foremost man in all 
the world ! 

But through all his marvellous career he never for- 
got his family. The same love and devotion that he 
bestowed upon them when a poor boy and a strug- 
gling lieutenant, he lavished upon them as general, 
consul, and emperor. Indeed, to them was due, to a 
certain extent, his later misfortunes, and his fall from 
power. The more generous he became, the more self- 
ish did his brothers and sisters grow. For their inter- 
ests he neglected his own safety and the welfare of 
France. His unselfishness was, indeed, his greatest 
selfishness ; and the boy who uncomplainingly took his 
sister's punishment for the theft of the basket of fruit, 
stood also as the scapegoat for all the mistakes and 
stupidities and wrong-doings that were due to his 
self-seeking brothers and sisters, the Bonaparte chil- 
dren of Ajaccio in Corsica. 



BY THE WALL OF THE SOLDIERS HOME. 205 



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. 

BY THE WALL OF THE SOLDIERS' HOME. 

The Emperor Napoleon had long been dead. A 
wastinof disease and Eno-lish indiofnities had worn his 
life away upon his prison-rock of St. Helena ; and, after 
many years, his body had been brought back to France, 
and placed beneath a mighty monument in the splen- 
did Home for Invalid Soldiers, in the beautiful city of 
Paris which he had loved so much, and where his days 
of greatness and power had been spent. 

There, beneath the dome, surrounded by all the 
life and brilliancy of the great city, he rests. His last 
wish has been gratified — the wish he expressed in 
the will he wrote on his prison-rock, so many miles 
away: "I desire that my ashes shall rest by the banks 
of the Seine, in the midst of the French people I 
have loved so well." 

That Home for Invalid Soldiers, in which now 



206 THE BOY T^IFE OF NAPOLEON. 

Stands the tomb of Napoleon, has long- been, as its 
name implies, a home for the maimed and aged vete- 
rans who have fought in the armies of France, and 
received as their portion, wounds, illness, — and glory. 

The sun shines brightly upon the walls of the 
great home ; and the war-worn veterans dearly love to 
bask in its life-giving rays, or to rest in the shade of 
its towerinof walls. 

It was on a certain morning, many years ago, that 
I who write these lines — Eua-enie Foa, friend to all 
the boys and girls who love to read of glorious and 
heroic deeds — was resting upon one of the seats near 
to the shade-orivincf walls of the Soldiers' Home. As 
I sat there, several of the old soldiers placed them- 
selves on the adjoining seat. There were a half-dozen 
of them — all veterans, grizzled and gray, and ran- 
ging from the young veteran of fifty to the patriarch 
of ninety years. 

As is always the case with these scarred old fel- 
lows, their talk speedily turned upon the feats at arms 
at which they had assisted. And this dialogue was 
so enlivening, so picturesque, so full of the hero- 



BY THE WALL OF THE SOLDIERS HOME. 207 

spirit that lingers ever about the walls of that noble 
building which is a hero's resting-place, that I gladly 
listened to their talk, and try now to repeat it to you. 

" But those Egyptians whom Father Nonesuch, 
here, helped to conquer," one old fellow said, — "ah, 
they were great story-tellers ! I have read of some 
of them in a mightily fine book. It was called the 
' Tales of the Thousand and One Nights.' " 

" Bah ! " cried the eldest of the group. " Bah ! I 
say. Your ' Thousand and One Nights,' your fairy sto- 
ries, all the wonders of nature," — here he waved his 
trembling old hand excitedly, — "all these are but as 
nothing compared with what I have seen." 

" Hear him ! " exclaimed the young fellow of fifty ; 
"hear old Father Nonesuch, will you, comrades? He 
thinks, because he has seen the republic, the consu- 
late, the empire, the hundred days, the kingdom " — 

"And is not that enough, youngster?" interrupted 
the old veteran they called Father Nonesuch.^ 

He certainly merited the nickname given him by 

1 Perhaps the correct rendering of this nickname would be "The Remnant,"' 
and it applies to the battered veteran even better than "Nonesuch." 



208 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

his comrades ; for I saw, by glancing- at him, that the 
old veteran had but one leg, one arm, and one eye. 

"Enough?" echoed the one called "the youngster," 
whose grizzled locks showed him to be at least fifty 
years old. "Enough? Well, perhaps — for you. But, 
my faith ! I cannot see that they were finer than the 
' Thousand and one Niofhts.' " 

"Bah!" again cried old Nonesuch contemptuously; 
" but those were fairy stories, I tell you, youngster, 

— untrue stories, — pagan stories. But when one can 
tell, as can I, of stories that are true, — of history — 
history this — history that — true histories every one 

— bah ! " and, shrugging his shoulders, old Nonesuch 
tapped upon his neighbor's snuff-box, and, with his 
only hand, drew out a mighty pinch by way of em- 
phasis. 

"Well, what say thou. Nonesuch, — you and your 
histories?" persisted the young admirer of the "Ara- 
bian Nights." "As for me, — my faith! I like only 
marvellous." 

" And I tell you this, youngster," the old veteran 
cried, while his voice cracked into a tremble in his 





"Beneath the great dome he rests." — The Hotel des Invalides. 
(T/ie "Soldiers' Hotiie'''' in Paris, contai7iing the To7nb of Napoleon.) 



BY THE WALL OF THE SOLDIERS HOME. 211 

excitement, " there is more of the marvehous in the 
one Httle finger of my history than in all the char- 
acters you can crowd together in your ' Thousand and 
One Nights.' Bah! — Stephen, boy; light my pipe." 

''And what is your history. Father Nonesuch?" 
demanded " the youngster," while two-armed Stephen, 
a gray old "boy" of seventy, filled and lighted the old 
veteran's pipe. 

"My history?" cried old Nonesuch, struggling to 
his feet, — or rather to his foot, — and removing his 
hat 5 "it is, my son, that of the Emperor Napoleon!" 

And at the word, each old soldier sprang also to 
his feet, and removed his hat silently and in reverence. 

" Why, youngster!" old Father Nonesuch continued, 
dropping again to the bench, " if one wished to relate 
about my emperor a thousand and one stories a 
thousand and one nights ; to see even a thousand and 
one days increased by a thousand and one battles, 
adding to that a thousand and one victories, one 
would have a thousand and a million million thinors 
— fine, glorious, delightful, to hear. For, remember, 
comrades," and the old man well-nigh exploded with 



212 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

his mathematical calculation, and the grandeur of his 
own recollections, " remember you this : I never left 
the great Napoleon ! " 

" Ah, yes," another aged veteran chimed in ; " ah, 
yes ; he was a great man." 

Old Nonesuch clapped his hand to his ear. 

" Pardon me, comrade the Corsican," he said, with 
the air of one who had not heard aright ; " excuse 
my question, but would you kindly tell me whom you 
call a Pfreat man ? " 

"Whom, old deaf ears? Why, the Emperor Na- 
poleon, of course," replied the Corsican. 

Old Nonesuch burst out laughing, and pounded 
the pavement with his heavy cane. 

"To call the emperor a man!" he exclaimed; "and 
what, then, will you call me ? " 

"You? why, what should we?" said the Corsican 
veteran ; " old Father Nonesuch, old 'Not Entire,' other- 
wise, Corporal Francis Haut of Brienne." 

"Ah, bah!" cried the persistent veteran; "I do 
not mean my name, stupid ! I mean my quality, my 
— my title, my — well — my sex, — indeed, what am I ?" 



BY THE WALL OF THE SOLDIERS HOME. 213 

"Well, what is left of you, I suppose," laughed the 
Corsican, " we might call a man." 

" A man ! there you have it exactly ! " cried old 
Nonesuch. " I am a man ; and so are you, Corsican, 
and you, Stephen, and you, — almost so, — youngster. 
But my emperor — the Emperor Napoleon! was he a 
man? Away with you! It was the English who in- 
vented that story ; they did not know what he was ca- 
pable of, those English ! The emperor a man ? Bah ! " 

" What was he, then ? A woman ? " queried the 
Corsican. 

"Ah, stupid one! where are your wits?" cried old 
Nonesuch, shaking pipe and cane excitedly. " Are 
you, then, as dull as those English ? Why, the em- 
peror was — the emperor ! It is we, his soldiers, who 
were men." 

The Corsican veteran shook his head musingly. 

" It may be so ; it may be so, good Nonesuch. I 
do not say no to you," he said. " Ah, my dear em- 
peror ! I have seen him often. I knew him when he 
was small ; I knew him when he was grown. I saw 
him born ; I saw him die " — 



214 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

"Halt there!" cried old Nonesuch; "let me stop 
you once more, good comrade Corsican. Do not make 
these other ' Not Entires ' swallow such impossible and 
indigestible things. The emperor was never born ; 
the emperor never died ; the emperor has always 
been ; the emperor always will be. To prove it," he 
added quickly, holding up his cane, as he saw that 
the Corsican was about to protest at this surprising 
statement, " to prove it, let me tell you. He fought at 
Constantine ; he fought at St. Jean d'Ulloa; he fought 
at Sebastopol, and was conqueror." 

" Come, come. Father Nonesuch ! " broke in " the 
youngster," and others of that group of veterans, 
" you are surely wandering. It was not the Emperor 
Napoleon who fought at those places. That was long 
after he was dead. It was the son of Louis Phi- 
lippe, the Duke of Nemours, who fought at Constan- 
tine ; it was the Prince of Joinville who led at Ulloa; 
and, at Sebastopol, the" — 

" Bah !" broke in the old veteran. "You are all 
owls, you ! What if they did ? I will not deny either 
the Duke of Nemours nor the Prince of Joinville, nor 




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BY THE WALL OF THE SOLDIERS HOME. 217 

Louis Philippe himself. But what then ? You need 
not deny, you youngster, nor you, the other shouters, 
that when the cannons boom, when the battles rasfe, 
when, above all, one is conqueror for France, there is 
something of my emperor in that. Could they have 
conquered except for him? Ten thousand bullets! I 
say. He is everywhere." 

" But, see here, Father Nonesuch," protested the 
Corsican, " you must not deny to me the emperor's 
birth ; for I know, I know all about it. Was not my 
mother, Saveria, Madame Letitia's servant ? Was she 
not, too, nurse to the little Napoleon ? She was, my 
faith ! And she has told me a hundred times all 
about him. I know of what I speak. Our emperor, Na- 
poleon Bonaparte, was born on the fifteenth of August, 
1769 ; and when he was a baby, the cradle not being 
at hand, he was laid upon a rug in Madame 
Letitia's room. And on that rug was a fine represen- 
tation of Mars, the god of war. And because his bed 
on that rug was on the very spot which represented 
Mars, that, old Nonesuch, is why our emperor was 
ever valiant in war. What say you to that ? " 



2l8 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

" Oh, very well, very well," said old Nonesuch, as 
if he made a great concession ; "if you say so from 
your own knowledge, if you insist that he was born, 
let it go so. I admit that he was born. But as to 
his being dead, eh ? Will you insist on that 
too ? " 

"And why not?" replied the Corsican, still harping 
on his personal knowledge of things in Ajaccio. " I 
knew the Bonapartes well, I tell you. There was the 
father, Papa Charles, a fine, noble-looking man ; and 
their uncle, the canon — ah! he was a good man. He 
was short and fat and bald, with little eyes, but with 
a look like an eagle. And the children ! how often 
I have seen them, though they were older than I — 
Joseph and Lucien, and little Louis, and Eliza and 
Pauline and Caroline. Yes ; I saw them often. And 
Napoleon too. They say he never played much. 
But you knew him at Brienne school, old Nonesucho*' 

"Yes," nodded the old veteran ; " for there my father 
was the porter." 

" He was ever grave and stern, was Napoleon; 
— not wicked, thouo^h " — 



BY THE WALL OF THE SOLDIERS HOME. 219 

" No, no ; never wicked," broke in old Nonesuch. 
" I remember his snow-ball fight." 

" A fio-ht with snow-balls ! " exclaimed the young- 
ster. 

"Yes; with snow-balls, youngster," replied old None- 




'"The Emperor was — the Emperor!' cried old Nonesuch." 

such. "Did you never hear of it? But you are too 
young. Only the Corsican and I can remember 
that ; " and the old man nodded to the Corsican with 
the superiority of old age over these " babies," as he 
called the younger veterans. 



220 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

" Let me see," said Nonesuch, crossing his wooden 
leg over his leg of flesh ; "I was the porter's boy at 
Brienne school. I was there to blacken my shoes — 
not mine, you understand, but those of the scholars. 
There was much snow that winter. The scholars 
could not play in the courts nor out-of-doors. They 
were forced to walk in the halls. ^ That wearied them, 
but it rejoiced me. Why ? Because I had but few 
shoes to blacken. They could not get them dirty 
while they remained indoors. But, look you ! one 
day at recess I saw the scholars all out-of-doors, — 
all out in the snow. ' Alas ! alas ! my poor shoes,' 
said I. It made me sad. I hid behind the orreen- 
house doors, to see the meanino- of this disorder. 
Then I heard a sudden shout. ' Brooms, brooms ! 
shovels, shovels ! ' they cried. They rushed into the 
greenhouse: they took whatever they could find; and 
one boy, who saw me standing idle, pushed me to- 
ward the door, crying, ' Here, lazy-bones ! take a 
shovel, take a broom ! Get to work, and help us ! ' 
— 'Help you do what?' said I. 'To make the fort 
and roll snow-balls,' he replied. * Not I ; it is too 



BY THE WALL OF THE SOLDIERS HOME. 22 1 

cold,' I answered. Then the boys laughed at me. 
My faith ! to-day I think they were right. Then 
they tried to push me out-of-doors. I resisted ; I 
would not go. Suddenly appeared one whom I did 
not know. He said nothing. He simply looked at 
me. He sisfned to me to take a broom — to march 
into the garden — to set to work. And I obeyed. I 
dared not resist. I did whatever he told me ; and, 
my faith ! so, too, did all the boys. ' Is this one 
a teacher ? ' I asked one of the scholars. ' He does 
not look so ; he is too small and pale and thin.' 
— ' No,' replied the boy ; ' it is Napoleon.' — ' And 
who is Napoleon ? ' I asked ; for at that time I was 
as ignorant as all of you here. 'Is he our patron ? 
Is he the king ? Is he the pope ? ' — ' No ; he is Napo- 
leon,' the boy replied again, shrugging his shoulders. 
I did not ask more. The boy was right. Napoleon 
was neither boy nor man, patron, king, nor pope ; he 
was Napoleon ! You should have seen him while we 
were working. His hand was pointing continually, — 
here, there, everywhere, — indicating what he wished 
to have done ; his clear voice was ever explaining or 



222 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

commanding. Then, when we had cut paths in the 
snow, and had built ramparts, dug trenches, raised 
fortifications, rolled snow-balls — then the attack be- 
o-an. I had nothing- more to do ; I looked on. But 
my heart beat fast ; I wished that I might fight also. 
But I was the porter's son, and did not dare to join 
in the scholars' play. Every day for a week, while 
the snow lasted, the war was fought at each recess. 
Snow-balls fiew through the air, striking heads, faces, 
breasts, backs. The shouting and the tumult gave me 
great pleasure ; but, oh ! the shoes I had to blacken ! 
Then I said to myself, ' I wish to be a soldier.' And 
I kept my word." 



THE LITTLE CORPORAL, 223 



CHAPTER NINETEEN. 



THE LITTLE CORPORAL. 



I 



" But why," asked the Corsican, as old Nonesuch 
conchided his story, and all the veterans applauded 
with cane and boot, " why did you not say, ' I wish to 
be a general,' and keep your word. Others like you 
have been soldiers of the emperor — and generals, 
marshals, princes." 

" Yes, Corsican," replied old Nonesuch sadly; "what 
you say is true. But I will tell you what prevented 
my advancement. I did not know how to read as well 
as a lot of the schemers who were in my regiment. 
In fact," old Nonesuch confessed, " I could not write ; 
I could not read at all." 

"Why did you not learn, then, father?" asked one 
of the veterans, who, because he sat up late every 
night to read the daily paper, was called by his com- 
rades " the scholar." 



2 24 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

" I did try to learn, Mr. Scholar," replied old 
Nonesuch, taking a pinch of snuff from the Corsican's 
box ; " but indeed it was not in the blood, don't you 
see ? Not one of my family could read or write ; and 
then I saw so much trouble over the pens and the 
books when I was blackening my boots at Brienne 
school, that then I had no wish to learn. ' It is all 
vexation,' I said. And when I became a soldier, what 
do you suppose prevented my learning ? " 

"Were your brains shot away, old Nonesuch?" 
queried the scholar sarcastically. 

" My brains, say you ! " the old man cried indig- 
nantly. "And if they had been, Mr. Scholar, I would 
still have more than you. No ; it was an adventure 
I had after Austerlitz. Ah, what a battle was that ! 
I had the eood luck there to have this leo^ that I 
have not now, carried away by a cannon-ball " — 

"Good luck! says he," broke in the youngster. 
"And how good luck, Father Nonesuch?" 

"Tut, tut! boys are so impatient," said old None- 
such with a frown. " Yes, youngster, good luck, said I. 
Well, one day, after I had my timber-toe put on, the 



THE LITTLE CORPORAL. 225 

emperor, who always had thoughts for those of his sol- 
diers who had been wounded, gave notice that he had 
certain small places at his disposal which he wished 
to distribute among us crippled ones, in order that we 
might rest from war. Then all of us set to wonder- 
ing, ' What can I do ? What shall I ask for ? What 
do I like best to do ? My wish was never to leave 
my own general. He was General Junot" — 

" Ah, yes ! I know of him," said the Corsican. 
" He married a Corsican girl, Laura Permon, a friend 
of the Bonaparte children." 

"The same," old Nonesuch said, with a nod at 
his comrade. " Now, I saw that the person who was 
nearest to my General Junot was his secretary. One 
day, when I was at Paris, the emperor, I was told, 
was to review his troops in the courtyard of the 
Tuileries ; so I dressed myself in my best, — it was a 
grenadier's uniform, — a comrade wrote on a piece of 
paper my desire ; and, with my paper in my hand, I 
posted myself near a battalion of lancers. 'The em- 
peror will see me here,' said I. In truth, he did come ; 
he did see me. He came towards me, and, with the 



226 



THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 



look that pierced me through, — ten thousand bullets ! 
as the plough cuts through the ground, — 'Are you not 
an Egyptian, my grenadier ?' he asked me. (You 




'"/ hnow not if I know,' said I." 



know, Corsican, he called all of us Egyptians who 
had fought with him in Egypt.) ' Yes, my Emperor,' 
I replied, so glorified to see that he recognized me, 



THE LITTLE CORPORAL. 227 

that, my faith ! my heart swelled and swelled, so that 
I thought it would crack with pride, and burst my 
coat open. The emperor took the paper I held out 
toward him. He read it. " So, so, my Egyptian ! 
you wish to be a secretary, eh?' — 'Yes, my Emperor,' 
I answered. ' Do you know how to read and write ? ' 
said he. 'Eh? Why! I know not if I know,' said I. 
' What ! You do not know if you know ? ' he repeated. 
'Why, no, my Emperor,' said I; ' for, look you! I have 
never tried ; but perhaps I do know.' The emperor 
pulled my ear, as much as to say, ' Well, here is an 
odd one ! ' ' But,' said he, ' to be a secretary one must 
know how to read and write, comrade.' He called me 
his comrade, see you — me, who had blackened his 
shoes at Brienne. I was the emperor's comrade. He 
had said it. The tears came to my eyes for joy. 
' Ah, then, my Emperor, let us say no more about it,' 
said I. ' But if you would promise to learn,' said 
he. ' Oh, as for that, my Emperor,' I answered, ' by 
the faith of an Egyptian of the guard, second divis- 
ion, first battalion! I do not promise it to you.' — 
' Then ask mie something else,' said he. I hesitated. 



228 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

I did not know how to say just what I wished to 
ask ; for it was worth to me very much more than 
the place of secretary. ' Come, then, comrade ; speak 
quickly,' said the emperor; 'what is it you wish?' — 'I 
wish, my Emperor,' I stammered, 'to press my lips 
to your hand.' " 

"Ho! was that all?" cried the youngster. 

"All!" echoed the Nonesuch, turning upon the 
youngest veteran a look of scorn. " All ! It was 
more than anything ! " 

"Well, and what said the emperor?" asked Stephen 
breathlessly. 

" He said nothing," responded Nonesuch. " He 
smiled ; then instantly I felt his hand in mine. I 
wonder I did not die with joy. I kissed his hand. 
He grasped mine firmly. ' Thanks, my comrade,' he 
said. ' My Emperor,' I said, ' I promise you never to 
learn to read and write.' And I said no more. And 
that, comrades, is why I never learned." 

"Which hand was it?" asked the youngster with 
interest. 

"This one, thank God!" cried the veteran. "The 



THE LITTLE CORPORAL. 229 

Other I lost at Jena. No, I never learned to write ; 
the hand that the emperor had clasped in his should 
never, I vowed, be dishonored by a pen. I look at this 
hand with veneration. See ! it has been pressed by my 
emperor. I love it; I honor it. Indeed, at one time 
I thought of cutting- it off, — that was before Jena, — 
and putting it in a frame, that I might have it always 
before my eyes. But my General Junot, to whom I 
told my plan, said that then it would be spoiled for- 
ever, and that the only way not to lose sight of it 
was to let it always hang to my arm ; thus, he said, 
it would always be beside me. That is how you see 
It still, comrades. To write, to write — bah! It always 
troubles me," old Nonesuch continued musingly, as he 
regarded his precious hand, " when I see those poor 
fellows, their noses over a bit of paper, their bodies 
bent double ! Writing is not a man's proper state ; 
it does not agree with his valiant and warlike nature. 
Talk to me of a charge, of an onset ! that is the 
true vocation ; that 'is why the good God created the 
human race. One — two — three — shoulder arms ! 
that is clear ; that is easily understood. But to study 



230 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

a dozen letters ; to remember which is b and which is 
o, and that b and o make bo! tliat is not meant for 
the head. I prefer to read a battle with my musket 
and my sword. Pif! paf! pouf! that is the way I 
read. And now that I can read no more, I have but 
one pleasure, — to tell of my battles. Is not that bet- 
ter than your 'Thousand and One Nights,' youngster?" 

" You have, indeed, much to tell, old Nonesuch," 
replied the youngster guardedly, " and you have, in- 
deed, seen much." 

" Ah, have I not, though ! " old Nonesuch re- 
sponded. " Do you not remember, Corsican, in the 
third year of the republic, as our government was 
then called, how the word came : ' The Enoflish are 
in Toulon ! Soldiers of France, you must dislodge 
them ! ' ? " 

" Ah, do I not, old Nonesuch ! I was a conscript 
then," replied the Corsican. 

" So, too, was I," said the old veteran. " We marched 
to Toulon. The next day there was an action. I ate a 
kind of small pills I had never tasted at Paris. The 
English and the French kept up a conversation with 



V 



THE LITTLE CORPORAL. 23 I 

these sugar-plums. Our dialogue went on for days. 
They would toss their sugar-plums into the town ; we 
would throw these plums back to them, especially into 
one bonbon box. You remember that box — that fort, 
Corsican, do you not?" 

"What, the Little Gibraltar?" queried the Cor- 
sican. 

"The same," replied old Nonesuch; "for so the 
English called it. But they had to give it up. We 
filled the Little Gibraltar so full of our sugar-plums 
that the English had to eet out. Then it was that I 
saw a thin little captain at the guns. I knew him at 
once. It was Bonaparte of Brienne school. This is 
what he did. An artillery man was killed while char- 
ging his piece. I do not know how many had been cut 
off at that same o-un. It was warm — it was hot there, 
I can tell you ! No one wished to approach it. Then 
my little captain — my Bonaparte of Brienne — dashed 
at the QTun. He loaded it ; he was not killed. Oh, 
what a pleasure-party that was ! There he met two 
other tough ones like himself, — Duroc and Junot. 
Ah, that Junot ! He became my general later. He 



232 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

was a cool joker. Napoleon wished some one to write 
for him. He asked for a corporal or a sergeant who 
could write and stand fire at the same time. Sergeant 
Junot came to him. ' Write ! ' said Napoleon. And as 
Jimot wrote, look you ! a cannon-ball ploughed the 
earth at his feet, and scattered the dirt over his 
paper. ' Good ! ' cried this Junot, never looking up 
from his paper. ' I needed sand to blot my ink.' That 
made Napoleon his friend forever. Then those in 
power at Paris took offence at something Napoleon did. 
They called him back to Paris. He was disgraced. 
But he had courage, had my Napoleon. He cared 
nothing for those stupid ones at Paris. ' I will make 
them see,' said he, ' that I am master.' He took post 
for Paris. Everything was wrong there. Every one 
was hungry. They fought for bread, as horses when 
there is no hay in the rack. Then, crack ! Napoleon 
came. In two moves he had established order. Then 
who so great as he ? He was made general. He was 
sent to Italy. He fought at Lodi. You remember 
Lodi, Corsican ? " 

"Ha! the fight on the bridge ; do I not, though ! " 



THE LITTLE CORPORAL. 233 

the Corslcan answered excitedly. "It was there he 
led everything ; it was there he conquered everything- ; 
it was there he sighted the cannon against the Aus- 
trians ; it was there he led us straight across the 
bridge ; it was there we cheered for him, and called 
him the ' Little Corporal ! ' " 

" Eh, was it not ! Cheer for the Little Corporal, 
comrades!" cried old Nonesuch, swinofinof his hat; 
and all the veterans sprang up, and stamped and 
shouted : " Long live the Little Corporal ! " 

" As he has ! " said old Nonesuch. " See you, 
Corsican ! what said I ? The emperor lives, I tell 
you ! " 

"And that was Italy, was it?" said the scholar. 

" Yes ; that was Italy," the veteran replied. " It 
was there we were going ; and, with our Little Corpo- 
ral to lead us, turned everything into victory." 

" Tell us of it. Father Nonesuch," demanded the 
youngster. 

" Yes ; tell us of it," echoed the younger veterans, 
their scarred old faces full of interest and excite- 
ment. 



234 '^^^ ^^'^ ^^^^' *^^ NAPOLEON. 

"I will, my children. It was thus, you see," — i 

puff — puff, "eh — Stephen, fill my pipe again!" 

So Stephen filled the old fellow's pipe again, and 
set it aglow ; and all the others waited, silently watch- 
ful, until, after a few puffs and whiffs, the old vet- 
eran be^an a^ain. 



i 



" LONG LIVE THE EMPEROK. ! " 



CHAPTER TWENTY. 

"long LIVE THE EMPEROR ! " 

" It was thus, you see," said old Nonesuch, cross- 
ino- his leg-s — the wooden one over the a-ood one. 
"At that time our army in Italy was destitute of 
everything. We had nothing — no bread, no am- 
munition, no sho.es, no coats. Ah, it was a poor 
army we were then ! The people at Paris, called the 
Directory, were worried over our condition. The army 
must have bread, ammunition, shoes, coats, they said. 
We must send one to look after this. And, as I told 
you, they sent Napoleon. It was in March, in the 
year 1796, that he came to us at Nice. We were 
near by, in camp at Abbenya. There the new gen- 
eral held his first review. He looked at us ; he pitied 
us. ' Soldiers ! ' he said to us, ' you are naked ; you 
are badly fed. The government owes you much ; it 
can give you nothing. You are in need of everything. 



236 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

— boots, bread, soup ! Well, I will lead you into the 
most fertile plains in the world. I have come to take 
you into a country where you will find everything in 
plenty, — dollars, cattle, roast-meat, salads, honor, pal- 
aces, what you will. Soldiers of Italy, how do you 
like that?'" 

" Ah ! but that was grand," cried the youngster ; 
" and you said ? " 

" We said, ' How do we like it, my general ? Ten 
thousand bullets ! March you at our head, and you 
will see how we like it.' His words gave us new 
heart ; his promises seemed already to clothe us. We 
were ragged and tired; but it seemed, after that speech, 
as if we walked on air, and w^ere dressed in silken 
robes. Forward, march ! Boom — boom — boom! Ta- 
ra, ta-ra-ra ! Hear the drums ! See us marching ! 
We marched through the day ; we marched through 
the nieht. We were faint with huno-er, but we marched. 
We were at Montenotte on the eleventh of April. 
We whacked the Austrians, — famous men, neverthe- 
less; well furnished, good fighters! But, bah! what 
was that to us ? We whacked them at Montenotte. 



"LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR! 239 

They ran ; we after them. We fell upon then at Mille- 
simo, at Deeo, at Mondovi, at Cherasco. We had a 
taste of the glory of being- conquerors. We routed 
the Austrians in those fio-hts that were called ' the 
Five Days' Campaign.' W^e had brave generals with 
us ; and we had Napoleon ! From the heights of Ceva 
he showed us the plains of Italy, — the rich, well- 
watered land which he had promised us. Then we 
crossed the Alps. Mighty mountains ! Bah ! what of 
that ? We were Frenchmen ; we had Napoleon ! We 
turned the flank of the Alps. We fought at Fom- 
bio ; we fought on the bridge of Lodi ; we marched 
into Milan. We were Frenchmen ; we had Napoleon ! 
In fact, we conquered Italy! We fought at Areola; 
we conquered at Rivoli. Then who so great as the 
Little Corporal ? We planted the eagles upon the 
lion of Saint Mark, at Venice — a famous lion, never- 
theless. But who could resist us ? We had Napoleon ! 
Then we returned to Toulon. Then Napoleon said, 
' Soldiers ! two years ago you had nothing. I made 
promises to you ; have I kept them ? ' — ' You have ; 
you have, my general ! ' every man of us shouted. 



240 THE BOY LIP^E OF NAPOLEON. 

' Will you follow me again ? ' said Napoleon. • To the 
death, my general ! ' we shouted once more. Behold 
us now embarked in ships. ' And now, what place 
are we to conquer? 'we asked our generals. 'Egypt,' 
they answered. ' It is well,' we said. ' We will o-q 
to Egypt ; we will take Egypt.' 

"My faith! but you were brave, you old soldiers," 
cried the youngster with enthusiasm. " But think of 
. it, then ! To Egypt ! " 

"Well, we took Egypt," resumed old Nonesuch. 
" We were Frenchmen. We had Napoleon ! And after 
that we undertook another little campaign in Italy. 
Then we returned to France, our beautifu.1 France, to 
install ourselves in the Tuileries. Eh!" — puff — puff, 
— " Light my pipe, Stephen ! " 

And Stephen again lighted the old veteran's pipe. 

"Yes; in the Tuileries" — puff — puff. "We gave 
ourselves up to fetes. Ah ! there were grand times — 
each one finer than the other. One mig-ht call them 
fetes indeed ! Death, of my life ! Who was it said just 
now that the emperor was a man ? Why, look you ! his 
enemies- — those villains of traitors — tried to kill him. 



"long live the EMPEROR! 24I 

They plotted against him. But, bah ! they could not. 
He rode over infernal machines as if they were roses. 
They could not kill him. Those things are for men 
— for little kings. He was Napoleon ! " 

" And at last he was crowned emperor," suggested 
the youngster. 

" Yes ; on the second of December, in the year 
1804," answered old Nonesuch. " And the Pope him- 
self came from Rome to consecrate our emperor. Ah, 
then, what fetes, my comrades ! what fetes and fetes 
and fetes ! It rained kings on all sides." 

" But there came an end oi fetes,'' said the scholar, 
wdio read in books and newspapers. 

"Well, what would you have? — always feasting? 
Perhaps you think that our emperor once an emperor, 
would rest at home. Yes ? Well, that would have 
been good for you and me ; but he had still to under- 
take battles and victories, — battles and victories ; they 
were the same thing ! We were at Austerlitz ; there 
I left this leg. At Jena ; there I dropped this hand. 
Then came the peace, made upon the raft at Til- 
sit ; then the war in Spain — a villanous war, and one 



242 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

I did not like at all. Napoleon was not there. Where 
he was not, the sun did not shine. Then we returned 
to Paris, The emperor married a grand princess. He 
had a son — a baby son — the King of Rome ! Then, 
too, what fetes ! A fine child the King of Rome ! I 
saw him often in his little groat- carriaee at the Tuile- 
ries. I do not know what has become of him. They 
say he is dead ; but I do not believe that, any more 
than I believe that my emperor is dead. Two deaths? 
Bah! old women's stories, — witch stories, good only 
to frighten children to sleep. When my emperor and 
his son come back, we shall be amazed that we ever 
believed them dead ! " 

" But he disappeared — the emperor disappeared — 
he vanished," persisted the scholar. 

" Yes ; he disappeared," the veteran admitted. 
" For after that came the Russian Campaign. Ah, 
but it was a cold one ! Such snow, such ice ; so 
cold, so cold! It was then I lost my eye. My leg 
1 left at Austerlitz, my arm at Jena ; my eye I 
dropped somewhere in the Beresina, — so much the 
better. I could not see that freeze-out. Then they 



"long live the EMPEROR! 245 

sent me here. And since that I do not know what 
has happened. They tell me — you tell me — much. 
But to believe such foolish stories ! Bah ! I am not 
a baby. They tell me that the emperor — my em- 
peror — was exiled to Elba ; that he returned again 
to France ; that he reigned a hundred days ; that a 
battle was fouo^ht at — where was it ? " 

" Waterloo," suo-eested the scholar. 

" Eh, yes, you say, at Waterloo ; and you say we 
lost it ? As if we could lose a battle, and Napoleon 
there ! Then you will say that the empire was no 
longer an empire, but a kingdom ; and that he who 
ofoverned was called Louis the Eio;hteenth, and others 
after him, but not my emperor. Bah ! foolish stories 
all ! " 

" But they are true, old Nonesuch," said the 
youngster sadly. 

" Yes ; they are true," echoed the other veterans. 
And the scholar added, "Yes; and your emperor was 
banished by those rascal English to a rock — the rock 
of St. Helena — a horrid rock, miles and miles out in 
the ocean. But he is here amone us ag-ain." 



246 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

" In this tomb, amid his old soldiers," said .the 
Corsican. 

Old Nonesuch nodded his head. " So you tell me ; 
and here he rests — he rests," he added softly. 

"For he died — he died," said the Corsican, makino- 
his statement boldy at last, " at six in the m^^^gi) on 
the fifth of May, in the year 1821. He died." 

Old Nonesuch struesfled to his feet once more. 
He removed his hat. He looked at the Corsican. 
"Never! He sleeps; he sleeps, comrades!" cried 
he, while his cracked and quavering voice rolled out 
as strongly as ever it had in clays of battle. " He 
sleeps, I tell you. My emperor never dies ! " 

This sentiment found an echo in all their hearts ; 
they stood uncovered before the resting-place of their 
great emperor. No one spoke. It seemed as if they 
feared, by breaking silence, to awaken the illustrious 
dead. And thus I left them. 

Thus, too, will we, who have followed Madame 
Foa's story, leave Napoleon — there in his splendid 
porphyry sarcophagus, beneath the golden dome of 



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Napoleon. 
(i. The General. 2. The Consul. 3. The Conqueror. 4. Tlie Emperor.) 



"long live the EMPEROR! 249 

the Soldiers' Home, in the midst of his veterans, in 
the heart of his beautiful Paris. 

Old soldiers are apt to be boastful when they tell, 
as did the Nonesuch, of the deeds of a leader whom 
they so often followed to victory. Madame Foa's pen 
has long- since stopped its task of writing of French 
heroism for the boys and girls of France ; but it never 
wrote anything more attractive or inspiring than the 
delicious bit of boasting that it put into the mouth of 
this dear and battered old veteran of Napoleon's wars, 
— - Corporal Nonesuch of the Soldiers' Home. 

For, if the American boys and girls who have 
followed this story will read, as I trust they will, the 
entire life-story of this marvellous man, — Napoleon 
Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, — they will learn 
that much of the boasting, of old Nonesuch was true 
story, as he assured his comrades ; while some of it, 
too, was, — let us say, the exagge^ ition of enthusiasm. 

But there was much in the career of the great 
Napoleon to inspire enthusiasm. The determined and 
persistent way in which, while but a boy, he climbed 
steadily up, using the obstacles in his path but as the 



250 THE BOY LIFE OF NAPOLEON. 

rounds of a ladder to lift him higher, affords a lesson 
of pluck and energy that every boy and girl can take 
to heart ; while the story of his later career, through 
the rapid changes that made him general, consul, con- 
queror, emperor, is as full of interest, marvel, and ro- 
mance as any of those wonder-stories of the "Arabian 
Nights" for which "the youngster" expressed so much 
admiration, but which old Nonesuch so contemptuously 
cast aside. 

There were dark sides to his character ; there were 
shadows on his career ; there were blots on his name. 
Ambition, selfishness, and the love of success, were 
alike his inspiration and his ruin. But, with these, 
he possessed also the qualities that led men to follow 
him enthusiastically and love him devotedly. 

But people do not all see things alike in this 
world; and since the downfall and death of Napoleon, 
those who recall his name have either enshrined him 
as a hero or vilified him as a monster. Whichever side 
in this controversy you m.ake take as, when you grow 
older, you read and ponder over the story of Napoleon, 
you wall, I am sure, be ready to admit his greatness as 



"long live the EMPEROR! 25 1 

an historic character, his abihty as a soldier, his energy 
as a ruler, and his eminence as a man. And in these 
you will see but the logical outgrowth of his self-re- 
liance, his determination, and his pluck as a boy, when 
on the rocky shore of Corsica, or in the schools of 
France, he was turned aside by no obstacle, and con- 
quered neither by privation nor persecution, but pressed 
steadily forward to his great and matchless career as 
leader, soldier, and ruler — the most commanding 
figure of the nineteenth century. 



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